


feathers & wax

by honeydew (metafictionally)



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: M/M, bone clocks au, ft. pathcode, imported from my other account, it's a powers au, sorry for the confusion, well. kind of
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-16
Updated: 2018-06-16
Packaged: 2019-05-24 04:33:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 9
Words: 31,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14947667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/metafictionally/pseuds/honeydew
Summary: ( do you feel like you just ain't worth saving? more times than you know i've felt the same thing. )





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> if you're looking at this and thinking it looks awful familiar, like perhaps it might be a repost from another account, you are absolutely correct. this was really more suited to this account anyway, so I'm going to continue to post it here instead of over on my other account (10cm).

Before the phone even rang, Junmyeon knew who was going to be on the other end.

Things had been changing, lately, little by little. Small things, at first, things that Junmyeon could dismiss as the natural and constant shift of the planet's energy, but now they were getting more noticeable. There were tremors now, like small earthquakes rippling through the currents. He had felt the same tremors for days—weeks, even—and Junmyeon knew better than to think they could let such things go unchecked.

They had tried, once, but look what that had gotten them: a mess, and the weight of two lost on Junmyeon's shoulders. Blood on his hands.

"Hello?" he said, in English, because he expected that it would be Kyungsoo.

"Junmyeon," Kyungsoo said. "You felt that?"

Of course Junmyeon had felt it—a particularly strong tremor, just before lunchtime in Marseille. It had been enough to startle him out of his home, wondering how he could have missed someone's realization, and he'd walked along the currents for a kilometer before realizing that the tremor hadn't been local.

Junmyeon was surprised it had taken Kyungsoo this long to call, although to be fair, lunchtime in Marseille was the middle of the night in Colorado.

"I felt it," Junmyeon said. "Of course. It wasn't local."

It wasn't a question, so Kyungsoo didn't answer it. "Call Jongdae," he said instead. "I'll call Yixing. We have work to do."


	2. Chapter 2

Jongdae had asked for the sabbatical only two days before. Considering that he'd left the request in the department head's inbox just before he'd left in the evening, long after everyone else in the department had headed home, it was really more like a day and a half. Two days, he knew, was an unheard-of turnaround for a six-month sabbatical request, especially for a regular faculty member without tenure or seniority.

Even so, there the approval was, tucked neatly into his department inbox and bearing all the necessary signatures and stamps that would make his departure official.

He took the paper with him to the department head's office, where he knocked lightly on the doorframe. "You got that back to me pretty fast," Jongdae said, leaning against the glossy wood and fluttering the paper slightly. "Impressively fast."

Professor Ibrayev looked up at him over the tops of his wire-rimmed glasses, and Jongdae returned the gaze, level and contemplative. Ibrayev looked greyer at the temples than he had been when they met, with a few more fine lines at the corners of his eyes. He had aged well in the years that Jongdae had known him, but he couldn't put a halt to the endless march of time.

"Is that so," Ibrayev said, setting down his pen and waving for Jongdae to step inside. "Close the door, Professor Kim."

Jongdae obeyed. He shut the door behind him and crossed the room to sit in one of the overstuffed leather chairs that Ibrayev kept in front of his desk. They were the kind of luxurious, ostentatious furniture that was practically a staple of a department head's office, but they were surprisingly comfortable to sit in. The chairs had been here for as long as Ibrayev had, and Jongdae had found himself in them many a time. He tried not to let himself think that this might be the last.

"I think that you and I are both aware of your… exceptional standing as a professor at this university," Ibrayev said. He steepled his fingers in front of his mouth and regarded Jongdae with an unreadable look. "You've never taken a personal holiday or even a sick day in all the time that I've acted as the head of this department." He paused, as if weighing the words on his tongue, and then added, "Nor, as I understand it, in all the time that you've been a member of this department, which predates my tenure considerably. Is that right?"

"Yes, sir," Jongdae said, inclining his head slightly.

He'd helped to found the university in 1934, acting then as a professor on loan from Saint Petersburg State University, and had stayed on as a part of the psychology faculty. Naturally, he left his position periodically to allow for some turnover among the professors and students—the other option being to explain to everyone how a man who barely looked a day over twenty-four could reasonably have been an active member of the faculty for eighty years. Jongdae preferred to keep things simple. Still, it had never been a secret among the higher levels of administration that he'd been doing this job since before many of them were born. 

"I can only assume, given your position here and your apparent distaste for time off, that such an abrupt request for a sabbatical must be a matter of some urgency," Ibrayev said. Again, Jongdae nodded. "So of course, I had no choice but to expedite it somewhat. The results of that expediting are what you hold in your hand."

Jongdae looked down at the paper, at the approval stamps decorating the lower right corner. "I had no intention of trying to leverage influence over the university," he began, but Ibrayev waved a hand, dismissing the concern he must have known was coming.

"You didn't," Ibrayev said. "But your presence here has been invaluable, and we're happy to accommodate you however we can."

He glanced out the window for a long moment, then added, in voice soft and thoughtful and tinged, Jongdae thought, with a touch of apprehension, "I'm not nearly as sensitive to it as you are, Jongdae, but you're not the only one here who can feel the flow of things." Jongdae shifted, and Ibrayev looked back at him, his gaze solemn. "Whatever it is, you think you can take care of it?"

"We'll do our best," Jongdae said.

"Then go where you must go," Ibrayev said. He leaned forward, put his elbows on his desk, and picked up his pen again. "I hope we'll see you again, Professor Kim. Sooner rather than later."

"Yes, sir," Jongdae said, and stood to leave.

*

"He said what?" Junmyeon asked, the phone connection making the surprise in his voice sound tinny and odd.

"That I'm not the only one who can feel the flow of things," Jongdae repeated. He folded a shirt and tucked it into his suitcase. It wasn't the neatest packing job he'd ever done, but he was pressed for time, scheduled to be on a flight to Berlin that left in mere hours. "I knew he wasn't a synecologist, but he's sensitive. And if he can feel it, then I think we need to take it that much more seriously."

"Interesting," Junmyeon murmured. Jongdae could imagine the furrow in his brow as he paced back and forth in his apartment.

"Traditionally, Kazakh people attribute great significance to the power of life energy," Jongdae mused aloud. "All superstitions have to come from somewhere. It's possible one of his ancestors was a synecologist, or at least had contact with one. Was there a branch active in this region?" He rolled a pair of sock together, almost absently. "It would be good to know how much we can rely on the locals, if it comes to that."

"I'll look into it," Junmyeon said. "But I hope it won't. You should hang up and keep packing, or you'll miss your flight."

Jongdae looked down at his hands, which had stilled with a t-shirt half-folded between them, and smiled. "You know me too well," he said. "I'll see you soon. Keep me updated." 

"The same to you," Junmyeon said, and hung up.

In three hours, Jongdae would be on a plane to Berlin. Junmyeon would head to Barcelona and, Jongdae thought, Kyungsoo would be on the road to Arizona, being in charge of the North American region in general. Things would truly be set in motion. The thought made a shiver run up Jongdae's spine, and he took a deep breath to chase the thought away, focusing instead on the repetitive motions of packing. He didn't have the luxury, right now, of allowing his thoughts to linger on anything other than their most urgent goal: getting to the incipient synecologists on the brink of their realizations. The rest would follow. That was what Junmyeon had said on the phone, and Jongdae trusted Junmyeon, although it took some willpower to keep his thoughts from wandering too far.

 _No worrying_ , he reminded himself, and zipped his suitcase closed.

*

With six hours left until his deadline, Minseok was sure of absolutely nothing except two indisputable facts: he was sick as a dog, and he was about to completely flunk his final review.

For the most part, those two things had nothing to do with each other, or at least Minseok was reasonably sure they didn't, although it probably would have been easier if they did. He did feel terrible—he was shivering with fever, his mouth dry and body stiff and aching—but that wasn't the reason why his final review was about to blow up in his face. After all, Minseok had been unfocused for longer than he'd felt under the weather, and it reflected in his art, in entire sections of mural he didn't remember drawing and lines that deviated wildly from the preparatory sketches he'd made 

He was also in possession of an unshakeable sense of imminent doom, which he wished was attributable to the all-nighter he'd pulled last night (and the night before, for that matter), or the dog piss coffee that they'd served him at the café he'd stopped in on the way to the gallery, but Minseok knew that wasn't the case either. No, it was because he was just going to bomb it, and they would fail him out of art school and the last eight years of his life would have been an absolute waste of time, not to mention money. God, his mother was going to kill him.

"You keep staring at it like you want to murder it." The voice startled Minseok out of his thoughts, and he looked up to see Felix standing above him, bearing two paper cups and a smile. "It might be frustrating, but I doubt it deserves to die."

"I deserve to die," Minseok said plainly. "I'm going to fail." He reached up to accept the paper cup Felix handed down to him. "If you don't see me ever again, it's probably because I jumped into the Landwehrkanal with weights on my ankles."

"First, drink your coffee," Felix said. "You went to coffee4you? No wonder you feel suicidal."

Minseok laughed weakly and took a sip. The coffee was good—better than what he'd been drinking before—but it did nothing to assuage the growing sense of panic in the pit of his stomach. "I don't know what's wrong with me," Minseok said, reaching up to run his fingers through his hair and undoubtedly leaving streaks of chalk dust in his wake. It was hard to force words out around the chattering of his teeth. "I don't even remember drawing half of this, Felix. It's completely different than my sketches and I don't know _why_." He made a noise of despair and considered dumping the cup of coffee over his head. "And on top of that I think I'm getting sick."

Felix reached out and pressed the back of his hand to Minseok's forehead. "You don't feel warm," he said. "Actually, you feel pretty cold. Is the air conditioning on in here? I doubt you need it."

"It's not on," Minseok said. He batted Felix's hand away, annoyed by the oppressive heat of it. "It's just my flat. I think the heating's broken." 

For the last two weeks, Minseok had been waking up to an ice-cold bedroom, so frigid his breath made a white cloud in the air when he exhaled. Outside it was springtime, the air no longer freezing (although it had yet to become truly warm), and Minseok couldn't make anything else of it than to assume that it had to do with the central heating and air, always on the fritz ever since he'd moved in.

"Well, tell your landlord to fix it," Felix said. "And listen, so it's different than your sketches, that doesn't mean you're going to fail. It's still good." He regarded Minseok's chalk work for a long moment, then nodded. "It's good. You'll be fine."

Minseok was sure that Felix's smile was meant to be reassuring, but there was a cold lump of despair sitting heavy inside him anyway. "I should keep working," he said, setting his coffee out of the way and then shifting back onto his knees. It would be better to get Felix out of here fast, in case this sense of doom developed into a full-blown anxiety attack.

"All right, all right," Felix said. "Kat and I are going drinking tonight, at that new club in Osthafen. Come with us If you pass, we'll drink to celebrate, and if not then we'll help you drown your sorrows."

It was a tempting offer. Minseok hadn't seen Katharina in what felt like weeks, not since they'd gotten a little too drunk and gone dancing and hooked up in a bathroom stall. She'd come twice, and the second time she'd come so hard she soaked his thigh, which had embarrassed her enough that she'd left without her underwear, and Minseok really hadn't known how to make that particular phone call.

Two weeks ago, the memory would have been enough to distract him completely, but now it didn't feel like much of anything. There was definitely something wrong with him. Maybe he was losing his mind, on top of getting sick.

He really should have said no, Minseok knew. He felt terrible, his mood was terrible, his art was terrible. He would be a bad date and he knew it, but the idea of spending some time in a club, surrounded by warm bodies, full of alcohol to drown out everything else—well, that had a certain appeal.

"I'll let you know," Minseok said, against his better judgment. "If I don't end up jumping into the Landwehrkanal, I'll probably come out with you instead."

"Good," Felix said. He grinned and ruffled Minseok's hair, then headed for the door, leaving Minseok staring at his work and wondering how he was going to survive this.

*

The installation review had not, contrary to Minseok's expectations, been a complete failure. Partly a failure—at least, in the sense that his advisor seemed to feel like his work was unfinished, and not in an artfully intentional way—but he'd been given a pass anyway, which was a blessing, since Minseok had spent the entire thing shivering so hard his teeth rattled. He was definitely sick, he thought, although then again he'd believed with the same certainty that he would fail his review, so maybe Minseok's intuition needed some tuning. Mind over matter.

Regardless, it was for purposes of celebration that Minseok went to meet Felix and Kat, who seemed a little awkward but generally over it, and the three of them all got smashingly, uproariously drunk. The club was damp with the heat of all the bodies packed into it, and the alcohol went a long way towards warming Minseok up inside. Equally helpful was the beautiful black-haired person who spent most of the evening dancing with Minseok, not seeming to mind that he was still a little chilly to the touch.

Still, by the time he stumbled out onto the street—having lost Felix to a pretty blonde exchange student and Katharina to a pair of girls with what they claimed was the best weed in the EU—Minseok was shivering again, although by all rights the night should have been balmy.

Well, early morning, Minseok amended, when he checked his phone and found that it was approaching four-thirty. A perfect time to stumble home and see how much of the stress of the last week he could sleep off.

There was enough on Minseok's mind—his review, the finishing touches he could put on his piece, the phone call he was going to have to make to his mother this weekend to tell her that her son hadn't flunked out of art school—that it took him most of the walk home to recognize the prickling sensation at the back of his neck for what it was: the feeling of being watched. The street leading up to his apartment was deserted, as it always was at this time, but Minseok couldn't help the way he looked around, stumbling on a curb as his eyes searched the shadows in every alley for the source of the feeling. 

Of course, there was no one. Why would there be, at this hour? "You're drunk," Minseok reminded himself aloud as he pulled his keys out of his pocket and swung them around his finger. "Just go inside and go to sleep, Minseok." 

His room, when Minseok let himself in, was exactly as he left it—a mess, art materials and books on the floor, a few empty glasses left on tables as evidence of the number of distracted, half-aware hours Minseok had spent around the flat in the last few days. He dropped his keys in a dish in the entryway and his bag on the floor in the living room, then snagged a glass from the coffee table as he passed. He could drink some water, take a preemptive painkiller, and sleep for as many hours as he wanted, until his body decided it was time to be awake. That would be the plan.

But the feeling of being watched was growing stronger with every passing minute, and by the time Minseok slumped down onto the couch in his main living area, it had developed into something closely approaching panic. 

Minseok wasn't the type to scare easily. He laughed at most horror movies, loved haunted houses, and didn't believe in ghosts or monsters. In general, people trying to startle or scare him were rewarded with a blank look and a slowly lifted eyebrow. But even so, he could feel the adrenaline starting to flood his system, the hairs on his forearms raising in a fight or flight reaction with no apparent provocation. 

"Stop it," he chided himself aloud as he dropped his head onto the back of the couch and took a deep, calming breath.

The television in front of him came to life in a burst of static and snow, the sound cutting through the deep silence of Minseok's flat and making him startle into a sitting position, teeth clenched, heart racing. "Holy shit," he said, because there was a difference between laughing at horror movies and living in one, and Minseok was beginning to feel like he was toeing the line. "Turn—off, what the fuck, where's the remote—"

The static noise of the television went quiet all at once, although the light continued to pulse through the room, illuminating everything in a pale glow. Minseok knew on instinct, even with his gaze trained on the couches where he had been hunting for the remote, that when he looked up, there would be something on the screen. For all his bravery, Minseok wasn't sure he wanted to know what that something was.

So he did the only logical thing—he ran. 

By the time Minseok's glass hit the carpet, he was already most of the way to the door, all traces of alcohol chased out of his system by the insistent and powerful rush of adrenaline. It was pure chance that he remembered to grab his keys, and then he was out of the flat, taking the stairs down two at a time until he burst through the door and into the street.

It was still silent outside, but lighter, hints of dawn starting to color the sky's edges. In the pre-morning calm, the adrenaline faded abruptly out of Minseok's system, and the creeping sense of panic edged away, replaced instead by bone-deep exhaustion and _cold_. He was so fucking cold, and running away from something without even knowing what he was running from.

"You're losing it," Minseok said, aware that he'd talked out loud to himself more times in one night, by now, than he ever had before in his life. 

"Rough night?" said another, unfamiliar voice, and Minseok nearly jumped out of his skin as he spun around to find the voice's owner. Despite his shock, though, the adrenaline failed to return, none of the same fight-or-flight instinct overtaking him now as it had in his apartment.

"You scared the shit out of me," Minseok said, pressing his hand to his chest, although it was mostly for show.

"Sorry," the guy said. He had been leaning against the garage door of Minseok's building, but now he stepped forward, his hands tucked into his pockets. He was wearing only a t-shirt and jeans, but where Minseok was freezing, this guy seemed perfectly at ease.

"Aren't you cold?" Minseok asked, a shiver rippling through him.

"Why, are you?" The man spoke perfect German—too perfect, Minseok thought. His words and inflection were textbook, unaccented, no trace of regional color. Not a native speaker, Minseok thought, although obviously an excellent speaker nonetheless.

Minseok ignored the question. "Why are you lurking outside my flat?" he asked, trying to make the words come out like a demand.

"Lurking sounds like such a mean word," the man said. "Listen, I'd like to banter with you but we really don't have the time for it. I'm Jongdae, and you're in trouble, aren't you?"

Jongdae. Korean, then, although Minseok might have guessed that by looking at him. He was handsome, unconventionally so, with a mouth that turned up at the corners like he was always laughing at something, although Minseok didn't think he was laughing now. Something about him seemed familiar. "What makes you think I'm in trouble?" he asked, deflecting again.

"If I had to guess," Jongdae said, "you've been feeling under the weather lately. Not sick, but close to it. Weak, shivering a lot. Losing time. Sometimes feeling like you're about to remember something you've forgotten, but that moment never comes."

On instinct, Minseok took a step backwards, putting another few centimeters of distance between himself and Jongdae. "How could you possibly know that?" he asked, although he sensed already that the question wouldn't be answered, at least not the way Minseok wanted it answered.

"I had a similar realization when I was your age," Jongdae said, which was weird, because Minseok was pretty sure that he was older than Jongdae, going by appearances. "Here. Take my card. I have answers to a lot of questions, but I don't think you know what the questions are yet. I'll be here, so come meet me when you're ready. What's your name?"

Minseok took the card when Jongdae handed it over, but he didn't look at it just yet. "Minseok," he said. He couldn't tear his eyes away from Jongdae's face. Up close, there were uncountable secrets in the form of fine lines at the corners of his eyes, despite how youthful Jongdae looked otherwise. 

"What the questions are," Minseok repeated, and Jongdae nodded as if that wasn't a completely weird thing to say. 

"If you come," Jongdae said, "just come right up. I'll know."

He nodded, as if to himself, and then turned to walk away, leaving Minseok standing in the middle of the street just as the first fingers of sunlight started to reach up over the horizon. Finally, Minseok looked down at the card in his hand, which was the size of a standard business card, except that the address was hand-written in impeccable, knife-sharp script. "Wait," Minseok said, reading the address again just to make sure, "Soho House?" 

But when he looked up, he was alone. Jongdae had disappeared, and Minseok was almost definitely losing his mind.


	3. Chapter 3

It came to him the next morning.

Well, the next afternoon, really, when Minseok awoke at half past four to a pounding headache and goosebumps all over his body, his breath clouding in the freezing-cold room every time he exhaled. The heater again, he thought, trying to conserve heat by snuggling up under his blankets—but there was no heat under his blankets, no heat anywhere to be felt. Even if he rolled himself up into the tightest ball he could manage, his skin felt almost frosty, his fingertips a little numb when they pressed against his arms. 

Minseok unfolded himself from the blankets and forced himself into a sitting position, his limbs stiff and uncooperative. He felt like he did as a kid, after coming in from a long winter evening spent playing in the snow, nose red, frozen through. How was it possible for him to be this cold in this season? In all twenty-five years of his life Minseok had never been this cold in spring. He had never been this cold at all.

He stumbled to the bathroom, rubbing hard at his eyes to clear some of the sleep away. The carpet padded some of it, but when his bare feet made contact with the tile of the bathroom, it shocked Minseok awake, sending another shiver up through his body.

The reflection looking back at him from the mirror wasn't even recognizable as Minseok. The circles under his eyes were dark as bruises, his lips so pale they were almost blue. His skin was sallow under the harsh fluorescent lighting of his bathroom. He looked like the walking dead, a man frozen in ice for a hundred years, and as Minseok took in his own appearance he couldn't help the creeping feeling that maybe the central heating wasn't the problem after all.

He reached out, almost hesitantly, and pressed his fingertips to the glass of the mirror. When a spiderweb of frost spread out from the place of contact, Minseok couldn't even summon the energy to be surprised.

Jongdae's voice floated out of his vague, tipsy memory of the night before. _Come meet me when you're ready_ to ask the questions that Minseok hadn't known then. Well, Minseok wasn't sure he knew now, but he sure did have questions.

Minseok dressed slowly, his limbs stiff and uncomfortable, in the warmest clothes he owned, then sat on the couch and called his mom.

"Honey," was how Minseok's mother answered the phone. Minseok almost never called, but when he did, there was always news of some kind, either good or bad. She sounded excited, restrainedly so, and for a long moment Minseok couldn't figure out why, until suddenly he recalled his final art review and the pass he'd gotten. Somehow that seemed like decades ago. "How did it go?"

"It was fine," Minseok said. "I passed."

"Oh!" His mother's voice was loud and Minseok's head hurt, and he groaned, the noise rattling from his chest. "Minseok—was that you? Are you sick?"

The question, full of worry, was enough to make Minseok's breath catch painfully in the back of his throat. Was he sick? At this point he didn't even know, but he was scared, scared of himself and what was happening to him. "I don't know," he said, his voice sounding weak and pitiful. "I don't know, mama. I'm so cold."

His mother was quiet for a moment. "Do you have a fever?" she finally asked, but something was different in her voice. 

"No," Minseok said. "I'm really cold, mama. I made ice in the bathroom just now, with just my hands."

"Oh, Minseok."

It didn't sound like disbelief. Nor did it sound like worry, not anymore. Instead, his mother sounded tired, resigned. It was hard for Minseok to wrap his mind around, so he didn't try. "What's happening to me?" he asked, his voice so quiet it was almost a whisper.

His mother sighed down the phone line. "Someone will have come to see you by now," she said.

Minseok thought of Jongdae and his strange business card, the way he'd been lingering outside Minseok's flat as if waiting for him. "Jongdae," he murmured. "He came and gave me a card. He said to go to him when I was ready."

"Go to him," his mother said. Her tone left no room for argument. "Right now. He'll take care of you." 

"What's _happening_ , mama—" 

But Minseok's mother cut him off. "He'll explain better than I can, and we don't have a lot of time," she said. "Hang up the phone and go, Minseok. I love you."

"Love you too," Minseok said, on autopilot, but his mother had already disconnected.

He took his keys when he left, and his phone, although he didn't know who he was going to call. Jongdae hadn't left a number, only the address of his hotel—Soho House, ridiculously luxurious and expensive. Not far, though, driving, so Minseok hailed a taxi as soon as he could and sat, shivering, in the backseat as the driver made his way along the Landwehrkanal toward Tiergarten. 

It wasn't long before he realized the air was getting colder. His shivering was growing more pronounced, and even the driver seemed uncomfortable, shifting in his seat and pulling his collar up around his neck.

By the time they were through Tiergarten it was no longer something the driver could ignore. "Didn't think we'd be needing the heater in this weather," he said, almost apologetic, as if it were his fault and not Minseok's very presence sucking the warmth out of the atmosphere around them. He reached out to turn it on, and it sputtered to life with a rush of damp air, but Minseok knew it wouldn't be of any use—he almost wanted to tell the driver to turn it off, not to waste his effort.

He couldn't make the words come out, though, not even when he noticed the driver giving him worried looks in the rearview mirror.

Both of their breath was making clouds in the air by the time the taxi pulled up in front of Soho House, despite the hard work of the heater in the cab. Minseok paid the fare with the last few bills he had in his wallet and pulled himself with some difficulty out of the back of the taxi, and the driver was probably grateful to get away from the strange, sick, cold boy who seemed to draw heat out of the very air around him. 

Standing on the sidewalk, Soho House loomed above Minseok, pale and full of what Minseok hoped were answers to all the questions he hadn't quite figured out how to ask.

*

Jongdae felt Minseok coming from halfway down the block. His nascent realization radiated power like a storm before the lightning, throbbing static in the air, making the hair on the back of Jongdae's neck raise up. Still, when he opened the door to let Minseok in, Jongdae couldn't help a flare of surprise—and alarm—at how terrible Minseok looked, pale and shaking, his arms wrapped around himself.

"The central heating isn't the problem," Minseok said. "I took a cab here. It was so cold the cab driver's breath made clouds." He shuddered, his teeth clattering together. "I'm the problem."

"So it seems." Jongdae stepped aside, and Minseok stumbled into the loft, his shoulders up around his ears as shivers wracked his body.

"What's happening to me?" Minseok asked.

For a second, Jongdae just looked at him. He seemed so small, so lost, and Jongdae wondered whether he'd seemed that way when Junmyeon had found him in Pyeongyang all those years ago. Centuries, now, so long ago it seemed like another lifetime. 

"Come here," Jongdae said. "Strip down. I ran a bath." Minseok looked at him with suspicion, and Jongdae rolled his eyes, although he couldn't blame Minseok for the sentiment. "Trust me, at that temperature you've got nothing I'm interested in," he said, gesturing toward the tub standing at the foot of the bed. He'd drawn it only minutes ago, and steam still rose from the surface, easily visible in the cooling air. Minseok had no control, not that Jongdae had expected him to. "Unless you'd rather freeze."

"No," Minseok said, finally moving to shrug off his sweatshirt. As he stripped out of his clothes, Jongdae moved around the room, gathering towels and bath gel. The former he dropped at the foot of the bed; the latter, he poured into the bath and swirled around with his hands until bubbles frothed on the surface.

When Jongdae turned back, Minseok had undressed, but was holding his shirt protectively in front of him. "Bubbles?" he asked, with an eyebrow arched. Even in that state, he had it in him to be tart. Impressive.

"You're the one who didn't want me to see you naked," Jongdae pointed out, "and I have to stay sitting next to the tub. Did you change your mind?"

Minseok exhaled, but didn't protest. Inwardly, Jongdae tried to turn down the sass. Despite his attitude, he understood that Minseok was scared, out of control and unaware of his own power, afraid of what would happen to him, what he could do. He had seen it so many times before, but for every new synecologist, it was the first time. Jongdae needed to remember that.

He turned his gaze away as Minseok climbed into the tub, and only when he heard the sound of Minseok's shirt hitting the floor did Jongdae look back. "Warm?" he asked, and Minseok nodded, sinking down until everything below his mouth was obscured by bubbles. 

"I feel like this is the first time I've been warm in weeks," Minseok said. Some of the suspicion had faded from his expression, but he was still regarding Jongdae uncertainly. "Are you going to tell me what's happening?"

"I will, on one condition," Jongdae said as he sank down to kneel at the foot of the tub. He put his fingers in the water, drawing power to his fingertips and spreading it throughout the tub. It would be enough to keep Minseok warm for now. "Suspend your disbelief. I'm going to tell you a lot of things that won't completely make sense, and a lot of things that won't match what you think you know about the world. Believe those things and I'll do everything I can to prove them to you." He leaned his cheek against the edge of the tub. 

"And if I don't believe you?" Minseok asked.

"Then things will continue to unfold exactly as they will, and in a few hours you'll believe me anyway," Jongdae said. "But it'll be much less comfortable for you in the meantime."

Minseok looked like he wanted to argue, but then deflated, the fight going out of him all at once. "I'll do my best," he said.

Jongdae took a slow breath, then exhaled it. This part was always hard, no matter how many synecologists he saw through their realizations. Nobody ever wanted to believe at first. "What differentiates us from corpses?" he asked after a moment.

The expression on Minseok's face told him that Minseok thought it was a stupid question. Nonetheless, he said, "We're alive."

"And what makes us alive?"

"We're conscious."

"Plants are alive, but they're not conscious."

"We have a higher intelligence, then."

Jongdae shook his head. "I'm not asking what makes us different from plants," he said. "I'm asking what makes us alive. Us, and animals, and plants, and microbes and whatever else you think of us as being alive."

Minseok paused for a long moment. "We create and consume energy?" he finally suggested.

"Bingo," Jongdae said. "We create and consume energy. All living things do, even the ones humankind thinks of as unconscious. And many of the things that you don't think of as 'alive' took energy to create, and consume energy in their own way. Rocks, dirt, water. There's life energy in all of those things. Still with me?"

"Life energy," Minseok repeated. "Sure."

"Obviously there are different types of awareness of that energy," Jongdae continued. "You wouldn't say that humans and cats have the same levels of awareness. Both are alive, both are conscious, but humans have control over our energy consumption and creation. Cats are mostly driven by instinct. But even cats have a greater awareness than… a Venus flytrap. And a Venus flytrap, no matter how basic, has a greater awareness than a stone on the ground."

"Can you really argue that a stone has awareness?" Minseok asked. His lips were less blue now than they had been, and his shivering seemed to have subsided somewhat. 

Jongdae stirred his fingertips around in the water, spreading heat around. "No, not exactly," he said. "But stones took energy to create and they require energy to move, or change. Millennia of mineral deposits create the stone and millennia of water or wind wears it away. They just have a more limited ability to control their energy."

"Okay," Minseok said. "In theory, I understand what you're talking about, I just still don't understand why you're talking about it."

"I'm getting there," Jongdae said. "Humans like to think of themselves as the pinnacle of awareness of energy. The top of the food chain, so to speak. They're not. There are people who are even more aware of that energy than humankind, and in being so aware, they become aware of the energies of other living beings. We're called synecologists."

"Synecologists," Minseok repeated, some uncertainty creeping back into his voice. "why do you keep talking about them like they're not human?"

"We are human, mostly," Jongdae said. "Or we were, once."

"We?"

"We," Jongdae said. "Including you, Minseok."

"Me?" Minseok sat up, soap bubbles sliding off his shoulders and into the bath. "I was kind of with you until you got to that part. Me? I'm the most average person who ever lived."

"And yet," Jongdae said, withdrawing his fingertips from the bath.

It took a moment for the frost to set in, but it was obvious when it did. The bubbles on the surface of the water started popping one at a time as tendrils of ice crept across the water away from Minseok's body, creating a translucent layer of ice along the surface. "Holy shit," Minseok said, and Jongdae put his fingers back in the water just as the frost threatened to reach the edge of the tub. The ice receded, slowly. "How are you doing that? How am _I_ doing that?"

"Synecologists don't usually realize—that's what we call the discovery of your energy, 'realization'—usually we don't realize our power until we reach full physical maturity," Jongdae said. "Which is apparently right now, for you. The realization usually starts with a couple weeks of physical symptoms, including unexpected manifestations of the energy that will eventually be your specialty."

"So I'm developing superpowers," Minseok said, sinking back against the wall of the tub. "Ice superpowers. I'm becoming Frozone."

"Yeah, basically," Jongdae said with a laugh. "Could be worse, right?"

"Oh my god," Minseok said, then laughed. It sounded less like amusement and more like desperation. "I'm losing my mind."

Jongdae dipped the rest of his hand into the water. He could feel the intensity of Minseok's power increasing, the heavy, skin-tingling inchoate static building in the room around them. It made Jongdae work twice as hard to keep the bathwater warm, to keep Minseok's ice at bay. 

"So then what?" Minseok asked. He was starting to shiver again, but Jongdae thought that had less to do with cold and more to do with the realization that Jongdae could feel coming. "I'll be able to control it eventually, right?"

"Now you're getting it," Jongdae said. "There are more of us in the world, people who can explain this better than I can and who can help you learn how to control it. If you want to, I can take you to them, but you have to decide now. Things are being set in motion right now and the sooner you learn how to control your energy, the better prepared you'll be."

"I have to decide now?" Minseok asked. He was trembling now, and Jongdae could practically feel the energy inside him condensing, drawing into a point of power so intense it left Jongdae breathless. 

Jongdae gripped the edge of the tub with both hands, bracing himself. "Hold onto something," he bit out, and Minseok had only barely taken hold of the lip of the tub when his body went tense, his power pulsing and then tearing outward from him in a soundless sonic boom. It touched nothing in the room but Jongdae, and it knocked Jongdae to the floor.

For a long moment there was silence, and then Minseok said, in a tired voice, "So that was it, huh?"

"Yeah," Jongdae said. His head was spinning, and he stared up at the ceiling for a long moment, trying to get himself reoriented. When he sat up, he shook his head to clear the ringing in his ears, then closed his eyes and focused on his own energy, rearranging things inside his mind until he felt like he had a better grip on himself. "Convinced yet?"

"I don't know," Minseok said. When Jongdae opened his eyes, Minseok was staring at him, looking shell-shocked. "My mom told me to come to you."

"It must be your mom's lineage," Jongdae said. "That makes sense. Synecology is usually passed down by mothers. Not always, but usually."

For a moment it didn't look like Minseok was going to buy it. Sometimes they didn't, sometimes new synecologists left and it took the branch weeks to find them again, and by then they had usually caused a few poorly-explained messes and were a bit more receptive to the idea that they needed help. Jongdae hoped it wouldn't get to that point with Minseok.

"So where will we have to go?" Minseok finally asked.

"I was hoping you'd say that," Jongdae said. "To China, tomorrow at two. Welcome to synecology."


	4. Chapter 4

From the moment the plane touched down in Barcelona, Junmyeon could feel that there was something wrong. In the time that he had been doing this, Junmyeon had felt nearly every kind of energy the planet was capable of—he knew what tidal waves felt like, tropical storms, the terrible, raw power of an earthquake claiming thousands of lives. And he knew pollution, he knew oil spills and nuclear waste and the slow death of rainforests cleared for cattle. This was something different—a subtle, nagging darkness in the currents that left him feeling unsettled and on-edge as he moved through the city.

Amid the strange darkness there was the familiar, almost comforting nascent power of a soon-to-be synecologist, and that, at least, was some relief to Junmyeon.

Jongdae called him in the early morning, when Junmyeon was settling in—somewhat—to the loft that would be his home until the realization. "I found the one in Berlin," Jongdae said. He spoke Korean—old Korean, the way he did when it was only he and Junmyeon—and that was comforting too, in its own way. Junmyeon was getting too old for this. "He's going to be powerful. He was drunk, I mean, not exactly ready but he's getting there. He'll come find me in the next day or two."

"Any idea what his energy will be?"

"He was freezing cold," Jongdae said. "Like he was sucking the heat out of the air itself. I would guess ice, or something like it."

"Hmm." Ice meant water, and heat, which meant that it would be Junmyeon himself and Qian who would train him. "Okay. Stay in the flat, keep your eyes open. If you feel anything change, call me."

"Are you in Barcelona?"

"Landed this morning, before dawn." From the window of the loft, Junmyeon could see the city unfolding. It was still soft in the early morning, and things seemed so much quieter than they were, all the city's harsh edges blurred out. "Jongdae."

"Yeah?"

Junmyeon hesitated. He wanted to tell Jongdae about the perversion of the currents he could feel here, about the darkness that was unsettling him. But Jongdae had work to do, and that story was best told when everyone was together.

"Nothing," Junmyeon said instead. "I'm going to call Kyungsoo and get some sleep. You know where I'll be."

"Yeah," Jongdae said. "I do."

They hung up, and Junmyeon didn't call Kyungsoo, at least not right away. Instead he sat in one of the chairs near the window and closed his eyes, focusing on the currents of energy inside of him, trying to pinpoint the source of his distress. His own energy was upset by something, and Junmyeon knew he couldn't dismiss it. The currents were sensitive, but there was value in knowing what they were reacting to.

But even in the deepest recesses of the wells of power inside him Junmyeon couldn't find any clues, so he surfaced and called Kyungsoo. 

"Where are you?" Junmyeon asked, when Kyungsoo answered.

"Arizona," Kyungsoo said. 

"Any luck so far?"

"I thought I was going to have to follow the energy, but I heard a truck driver at a restaurant talking about a boy working at a truck stop in Globe. It might be nothing."

"But it might be something," Junmyeon said. "Is it the right direction?"

"It is," Kyungsoo confirmed. "I'll see what there is to see. Are you in Barcelona?"

Sometimes it was almost eerie, how similar Jongdae and Kyungsoo could be when they had their business faces on. Different in almost all other aspects, but both were focused when they needed to be, with a passion and drive that sometimes still surprised Junmyeon even after these many decades.

"I am," Junmyeon said. "I landed this morning."

"It must be early there." 

"Just past seven." The sun was up by now, although the light was still faint. Dew still clung to the windowsill, but it wouldn't for much longer, Junmyeon could tell.

In the sound of his hesitation, Kyungsoo must have heard something, because he asked, "What is it?"

Junmyeon signed. Kyungsoo was too perceptive, sometimes. Maybe a virtue of having known Junmyeon for so long. "I have a… feeling," he said, unwilling to put a word like _good_ or _bad_ to it. "Something is wrong here. I tried to figure out what, but I can't get at it from here. I'll have to go to the locus when we get back to Yunnan."

"Not a natural event?"

"No," Junmyeon said. "I wondered, but it's different. I know how those feel."

Kyungsoo was quiet for a moment. "Finish what you have to do," he finally said. "Be safe."

"I will," Junmyeon said.

It was rare for Kyungsoo to express concern so openly. Junmyeon thought about it even after they'd hung up, when he was laying on the bed in the loft and looking up at the beams of the ceiling. He had known Kyungsoo for a very long time, a little longer, even, than he'd known Jongdae. It had taken quite a while for Junmyeon to ask why Kyungsoo never seemed to worry about any of them, when they went off to do their work and come back, but when he did ask, Kyungsoo had just looked at him evenly and said, "Because I trust you."

Now, Junmyeon knew that Kyungsoo wasn't telling him to be safe because he didn't trust Junmyeon, but because Kyungsoo knew—just like Junmyeon knew—that something was changing in the world of synecology, and neither of them knew exactly what. That was reason enough for caution.

*

From the depths of an exhausted midday nap, Junmyeon awoke to a cold sweat and a roiling nausea in the pit of his stomach. 

He had spent most of the morning and early afternoon focusing his mind and plotting the intersections of different currents throughout the city. Realizations often occurred close to a point of strong energy, such as the one atop which Junmyeon's hotel sat. It would be ideal to get the new synecologist here, to have the conversations that needed to be had and prepare them for what was to come, but as Junmyeon stumbled out of bed and pulled his jacket on, he knew that wouldn't be possible today.

The power that condensed in a person before their realization felt different to every synecologist. To Jongdae, Junmyeon knew it felt like static in the air; to Kyungsoo, it felt like pressure. To Junmyeon, it felt like humidity, like dampness that clung to his skin and clothes and coated the inside of his nose and mouth and throat, almost suffocating, even more so the more powerful a realization was.

Now, though, there was another sensation. The nausea, Junmyeon realized, was not illness or the airplane food from this morning—it was a physical response to the darkness he'd felt in the current this morning, a darkness that now felt oppressive. It felt like a perversion, something rotting, so sick and withered and terrible that Junmyeon's whole body couldn't help but respond.

He had felt this before, once.

Junmyeon called Kyungsoo from the street as he walked, with some difficulty, in the direction of the inchoate synecologist. "Something is wrong," he said to Kyungsoo's voice mail, his voice tight with the effort of keeping himself from throwing up. "We need to have a meeting. Not just us, the other continental branches too. I'll explain when I can."

He hung up and leaned over the gutter, vomited, then continued down the road. The power was beginning to grow stronger, and with it, the darkness was growing stronger too. Junmyeon had never felt this sick in his life, and he had lived for a very long time.

Ahead there was a plaza, full of the pulsing, almost shimmering flow of power between currents. The energy of the planet didn't present itself visibly to Junmyeon, although he had heard of synecologists who could see the way the currents flowed. Nonetheless, the part of his mind that was attuned to such things made such a vivid picture in his mind that it was almost as if he could follow the flow with his eyes, until he spotted the boy he was here for.

He was standing outside a café, looking scared. He looked like an adult, almost—taller than Junmyeon, with a strong jaw and large hands—but the expression on his face looked more like a lost child, unsure of what to do. Around him, patrons of the café and passersby in the square were frozen in time, paused with coffee cups halfway to their lips, mid-stride, flipping pages of newspapers or talking into cell phones.

A long time ago, Junmyeon had known a time synecologist, and that was the only reason he was able to move now—his mind breaking away from the constraints of the boy's energy, allowing Junmyeon's body to move freely. Him, and one more man, who was striding across the plaza toward the boy with intent in his expression.

He wasn't a synecologist, that much was clear. Dark-suited, dark-eyed, his whole presence full of the same horrible darkness that Junmyeon had been fighting since he'd landed in Barcelona.

Moving more quickly now, Junmyeon drew power into the tips of his fingers and reached out with it. A puddle at the other man's feet reached out and wrapped around his ankle, pulling him down hard onto the paving stones.

The boy startled, and just like that, the scene around them sprang back into motion. Junmyeon dodged a businessman screaming into a cell phone, a woman walking a dog, and came up next to the boy. In Spanish, he said, "Do you understand what you just did?"

"No," the boy said, sounding breathless, "was that real?"

"It was real," Junmyeon said. From the corner of his eye, he could see the man climbing to his feet. He didn't approach, though, just regarded Junmyeon with a long look that Junmyeon couldn't quite understand. "You've just become a part of something much bigger than yourself. I can answer all of the questions you have, but you're in danger and we need to go."

The second that the boy took to decide seemed like an eternity, but eventually he nodded. It was a relief—sometimes they fought, unwilling to believe even in that which they had just experienced, and those encounters were always much more difficult even without such immense pressure. Junmyeon understood, though, that it was difficult for some to suspend their disbelief, their reliance on the laws of nature that they had come to know over the last two-odd decades of life.

Junmyeon took his wrist and pulled him away, and as they walked out of the plaza and back down into the street, he felt the weight of the darkness start to lift from his body. The relief of it shook him down to his core. "What's your name?" he asked the boy.

"Zitao," the boy said. 

"Chinese?"

"My father is." 

"Is Spanish or Chinese more comfortable?" Junmyeon asked.

"Either is okay."

Zitao's tone was calm, but Junmyeon could feel his pulse racing where Junmyeon's hand was still wrapped around his wrist. He could also feel Zitao's power rising, condensing, drawing into itself until Junmyeon felt drenched with it, felt like he was drowning. This wasn't ideal—it would have been better if he could have gotten Zitao back to the loft, somewhere safe—but things didn't always go as planned, and Junmyeon would have to make do. He pulled at Zitao's wrist and pushed him into a narrow alley instead, laundry strung above them, shadows all the way down.

"In here," Junmyeon said, "hold on—"

He'd meant to tell Zitao to hold onto something, but it was too late. The accumulation of power had reached its climax, with no regard for either of them, and the best Junmyeon could do was push Zitao back against one wall of the alleyway before his realization hit and the ripple of power burst forth from Zitao's entire body. The force of it was enough to bring Junmyeon to his knees, and across from him Zitao slumped against the side of the alley, then slid down, until he was sitting on the ground. 

"What was that," Zitao asked in Chinese, his face ashen and his hands shaking. 

"Your realization," Junmyeon said. Already he was scrambling to get ahold of himself, focusing his power, shaking away the remnants of Zitao's that clung to him like drops of dew. "I wish I'd gotten you back before—oh well. Do you feel better?"

"I—yeah." Zitao took a deep breath and exhaled it. He was still trembling, but Junmyeon could see some color return to his face, gradually. "How did you know I wasn't feeling well?"

"Nobody ever feels well before their realization," Junmyeon said with a smile. He could still feel creeping tendrils of unease and perversion in the currents around them, but their weight was lighter now, much less oppressive. He took a deep breath just to relish that he could.

"You speak really good Chinese," Zitao said, as if suddenly realizing that they'd been speaking Chinese for a while. "Are you—?"

"No, but I've been studying for a long time." Junmyeon pushed himself up, dusted off his knees, and reached out a hand to pull Zitao up. "My name is Junmyeon. I'll take you back to my loft, and I'd like you to call your father, please. I think he and I have some things to talk about."


	5. Chapter 5

"I'm not surprised that you called," Zitao's father said. "But I wish you didn't have to."

The phone was between Junmyeon and Zitao, lying on top of the table, and Zitao looked at it with obvious confusion. "What do you mean, you're not surprised?" he asked.

Junmyeon touched his arm, briefly, and Zitao stilled. He seemed less uncertain now, more confident with his father's presence, even if that presence was through a phone. "You have others in your family tree, then," Junmyeon said to Zitao's father. "But not you, yourself, or I would know you, if you're from the East Asian branch."

"The East Asian branch of what?"

"Taozi, please," Zitao's father said. "His great-grandmother, she was… it was dormant for so long we didn't think there would be another. I only suspected when he told me he was feeling sick a week or two ago. That he was forgetting things."

Junmyeon steepled his fingers in front of his mouth and thought for a long moment. "He has the potential to be very powerful," he finally said. "But he will need to come with me, for now."

"Can't it wait? Until he's grown, he's still in the middle—"

"I'm afraid it can't," Junmyeon said. "It would be much easier if we could wait, I know, but the laws of nature have a tendency to get their way whether or not we like it... We'll bring him to Yunnan and train him, and when he has learned to control his powers he can come back to you."

Everyone was silent for a moment, and then the staticky sound of a sigh issued from the phone's speaker. "He will come back to me?"

Zitao looked alarmed, and Junmyeon touched his arm again, this time leaving his hand there. "He will," Junmyeon said, his voice heavy. With the promise he was making, and also the knowledge that it may be a promise he would have to break, if it came to that. "I'm very good at what I do, sir. I've been doing it for a very long time."

"Then go," Zitao's father said, and then, "I love you, Taozi," and then the line went dead.

Zitao sat perfectly still, although there was an almost imperceptible tremor in his arm where Junmyeon's hand rested. "That was it?" he asked. "Did my father just give me away to you?"

"No, of course not," Junmyeon said. "I'm sorry. I know this must feel like a nightmare." He pushed Zitao's phone back toward him and stood up, then walked to the kitchen area, where the staff had left a pitcher of water on the counter. "You look tired, Zitao," he said, over the sound of water pouring into each of the two glasses he fetched from the cupboard. "Do you want to sleep first, or would you rather I explain what I can?"

Zitao did look tired, or rather exhausted, dark circles under his eyes and skin still a little pale. He looked better than he had hours before, but it wasn't easy to recover from something like a realization without a few hours of deep sleep and some water. Junmyeon brought both cups back over to the table and set one down in front of Zitao, who looked at it for a long moment without speaking.

"I want you to explain," he finally said. "I don't know how much of it I'll understand."

"That's fine," Junmyeon said. It wasn't easy to understand all at once. Impossible, probably. "Let's sit outside, at least. You can get some fresh air."

There was a terrace attached to the loft, and that was where Junmyeon led Zitao. He settled into one of the chairs and Zitao slumped into the other. Without his blazer, which he'd left inside, Zitao seemed younger somehow, smaller. Less intimidating and more like the inexperienced young adult he was, suddenly and without warning thrown into a world he had never known. 

"I imagine a lot of what I said to your father didn't make much sense to you," Junmyeon said.

"Less than half," Zitao said. "Maybe closer to none."

"I didn't mean to leave you out," Junmyeon said. "It was a conversation that needed to be fast, and explanations would have dragged it out." He took a sip of his water and leaned back in his chair, considering where to start. "Ask what you want to know."

When he glanced over at Zitao, Zitao's expression was a study in complexity. A million questions Junmyeon could see vying for the chance to be asked, and Zitao with no idea where to start. Okay, maybe not like this, then. "Should we start with what's happening to you?" Junmyeon asked. "Or with the family tree and your family's connection to the East Asian branch?"

It was an attempt to give Zitao direction, and it seemed to work. "What happened to me," he said, followed immediately by, "Am I dying?"

"No, god, no," Junmyeon said with a laugh that was more surprise than amusement. "It'll take you another day or so before you feel completely better again, but you're not dying. Your body is just adjusting."

"To what?"

"Your power." Junmyeon paused. This was where so many new synecologists got hung up. "What do you remember from the café, before we met?"

Zitao paused to consider. "I was drinking coffee, reading the newspaper," he said. "I wasn't feeling well but—I do some work for my dad's company sometimes, I didn't want to let it get to me. The lightbulb over the bar exploded and I went like this"—he brought his hands up over his face, holding an imaginary newspaper—"and when I looked again everyone was frozen."

"Time was frozen," Junmyeon said. "Nobody moved except you, is that right?"

"Right," Zitao said. "I got outside and it was the same, except for…" He glanced up, met Junmyeon's eyes. "You. And the other guy."

Junmyeon nodded.

"Do you know him?"

The shudder that ran up Junmyeon's spine was purely instinctive. "No," he said, trying not to let his disgust show in his expression. "But I could feel him, and something was very wrong. I don't think his intentions towards you were good, whatever they were."

"Okay—okay, I have questions about that too but let's go back to power," Zitao said, "what power are you talking about?"

"That's not a simple question," Junmyeon said, "but for the sake of time and understanding I have to give it a simple answer, for now. You have the ability to access and use certain types of energy, life energy. It's called synecology. I'm the same way, although I use a different type of energy than you do."

"…Like magic?" Zitao said, his brows already drawing together into a doubtful expression.

"Not like magic," Junmyeon said. "I guess you could call it supernatural, but only because it's above—super—what most humans consider to be the laws of nature. It's like being able to make certain parts of the planet's energy do what you want. Again, that's too simple, but I'm trying to give you the basics of a practice that has existed as long as humankind has existed."

"Okay," Zitao said. "Okay, so, I have—what, time power?"

"Apparently."

"What power do you have?" 

"Water." Junmyeon dipped his finger into his glass and, when he drew it out, brought a slim, shimmering thread of liquid with it. When he turned his palm up, it settled in his hand and formed shape after shape, a beetle, a flower, a rainbow that arched from the pad of his pointer finger to the fleshy part of his palm. Zitao's eyes were as wide as saucers.

"Are you sure this isn't magic?" he finally asked, reaching out to touch the gently undulating pool of water in Junmyeon's palm. The water gave way around his finger, but clung to it gently when Zitao pulled it back.

"I'm sure." Junmyeon reached out to pour the water onto the floor of the terrace, then wiped his palm on his pants.

"I thought you said that it was life energy," Zitao said. "But my power is time?"

"Yes, well." Junmyeon sighed, smiling a little. "I did say I was oversimplifying. Time isn't exactly life energy, but it is a planetary energy in its own way. The dimensions that affect life can also be manipulated by synecologists, but it's much rarer. There are a dozen or more synecologists living right now who can do what I do, but in the entire time I've been alive I've only ever known one other time synecologist."

Zitao paused, then asked—hesitantly, like he wasn't sure he was allowed—"How long have you been alive?"

"You lose track after a while," Junmyeon said. "Give or take nine hundred years?"

Zitao cursed under his breath in Chinese, and Junmyeon laughed. "I know. I look great, don't I?" His body was beginning to show the wear and tear from centuries of work, but all things considered, it could be worse.

"So that guy… the other guy, near the café. He wasn't a synecologist?"

"No," Junmyeon said slowly. "I'm not sure what he was, but he wasn't a synecologist."

"Then how did he find me? How did you find me?"

"You really ask the hard questions, don't you?" Junmyeon closed his eyes for a moment. "There are eight branches of synecology around the world, and each branch has eight synecologists who are trained to tap into the currents of power that run around the planet and find the synecologists who are about to realize their power. That's what you did, earlier—we call it a realization because the power is always there, but it's latent up until that point. I'm one of them, for the East and Southeast Asian branch."

"And you found me because… my family was part of the East Asian branch?"

"Right. The tradition is that synecologists will train at the branch their family has historically been a part of. It's actually a little inconvenient, because it ends up with situations like this—me having to take you from Barcelona to China and train you there. But it's more trouble than it's worth to coordinate a change between all eight branches, so we've just left it alone up to this point."

Zitao seemed to be running out of questions, and Junmyeon could see that his eyelids were drooping, despite it being just past two thirty in the afternoon. They would be traveling tomorrow, and Zitao would need to be well-rested—Junmyeon would too, especially now that he could no longer sense that darkness seeping into the power currents around the loft. 

"We should rest," Junmyeon said. He finished the rest of his water, then took Zitao's empty cup and stood up. "I'll answer any other questions you have when you're awake. We're going to have to travel tomorrow."

"Tomorrow?" Zitao said. "I don't have my passport—"

"You won't need it. Money, either, if that was the next question." Zitao closed his mouth. "Synecology is widespread and powerful. As long as you're with me, you won't need anything."

Zitao nodded, seeming to accept this explanation, although Junmyeon didn't know whether he understood or whether he was just too tired to argue. He held the door open for Zitao to come inside, and gestured toward the bedroom. "Go rest," he said. "I have some work to do. Let me know if you need anything."

By now, Zitao's eyes were mostly closed, and his nod was sluggish and sleepy. Junmyeon smiled, a feeling not unlike affection spreading warmth through his chest, and watched as Zitao trudged into the bedroom and closed the door. Only then did he move, first to set the empty glasses in the kitchen and then into the living room, where he brought out his computer and settled in to work. 

Once all his emails were sent and he'd confirmed travel details for himself and Zitao tomorrow, Junmyeon leaned back on the couch and took out his phone. Unsurprisingly, he had three missed calls from Kyungsoo and ten from Jongdae, plus a series of increasingly agitated text messages and one message from Yixing which read, simply, "Call me."

This was why Junmyeon shouldn't leave voicemails while under stress.

He called Kyungsoo first, and he answered on the first ring, despite that it was barely past dawn in Arizona. "You're alive," Kyungsoo said, his voice managing to sound at once perfectly deadpan and full to the brim with worry. 

"So it would seem." Junmyeon laughed, softly. "I'm sorry for that voicemail."

"Jongdae's been panicking. You should call him."

"I will." 

"Are you going to explain?"

Junmyeon sighed. "I don't know if I have much to explain other than what I said," he said. "I know I told you this morning that I had a strange feeling about the currents in Barcelona, when I landed."

"Right."

"It was so much worse," Junmyeon said. "I went to sleep and when I woke up… it was terrible. It felt like…" He trailed off, not wanting to name it. Kyungsoo had been there too, at the battle in Kunming. Kyungsoo had almost died there, and the last thing Junmyeon wanted was to give him reason to think that could happen again.

Kyungsoo was silent, and Junmyeon sighed. "It wasn't good," he said instead. "But I could feel the realization about to happen too, so I went out to find him. I wasn't the only one looking, Kyungsoo. There was someone else in that plaza too and—" The memory of the other man in the plaza, the strength of his presence, made Junmyeon taste something sour in the back of his mouth. He swallowed hard. "The new one, he's a time synecologist."

"Time?" Kyungsoo repeated. "We haven't had a time synecologist in—"

"Decades. Centuries." 

For as long as Junmyeon could remember, Yasuo had been the only time synecologist alive. He had been the one who taught Junmyeon to control himself under temporal pressure. Before him, Junmyeon wasn't even sure when the last time synecologist had been realized—he wasn't even sure if there had been one before, or if Yasuo was the first. And if Yasuo was the first, then…

"That's not all," Junmyeon said, his voice coming out too abruptly. He took a deep breath and tried to soften it. "We've all been trained to break a time freeze if we need to, but the other man had been too. The one who was looking for Zitao."

"Zitao must be the new one?"

"Right."

"How would someone else have learned?"

"I don't even want to think about that," Junmyeon admitted softly. 

He could almost hear the moment that Kyungsoo understood what he meant. The darkness in the currents, the crushing sense of sickness. Another man, not a synecologist, who knew how to break out of a time synecologist's hold. Either he was very lucky, or. Or.

"It's not possible," Kyungsoo said. "I saw him die. I killed him, Junmyeon."

"I know." There was a reason Junmyeon hadn't wanted to bring up the possibility, and this was it. He remembered too vividly the devastation that had followed the battle in Kunming. How Kyungsoo had taken months to be himself again, crawling slowly out from underneath the crushing weight of guilt. How Yixing had been unable to bring himself to use his power for nearly a century, and how it still clawed at him every time he did. Junmyeon knew. He knew too well. "I don't want to believe it either, but I think we need to consider the possibility. I'll call a meeting when I get back to Kunming."

At the locus in the foothills, Junmyeon would be able to show the others what he had seen, let them feel the same darkness he had felt and let them decide for themselves. Until then—"Kyungsoo," he said.

"Yeah."

"Don't tell Jongdae or Yixing," Junmyeon said. "We don't know yet and there's no need to…"

"I understand." Kyungsoo sounded shaken, but underneath the tremor in his voice was a strength that Junmyeon had always relied on. "I'll meet you in Kunming. Call Jongdae. If you tell him it was airsickness I won't contradict you."

Junmyeon laughed, a brittle sound. "Thank you," he said.

When they hung up, Junmyeon called Jongdae. He didn't say airsickness exactly, but made his excuses, and Jongdae—whether oblivious or merely trusting that Junmyeon would tell him when the time was right—didn't push.

"Yixing called me, when he couldn't reach you," Jongdae said toward the end of their conversation. "He said Paris called."

"What did they want?"

"They said there was a power spike in London and another in Lyon, and that both of them are ours. I don't know if you felt that or not, but I figured I'd pass the message on anyway. Yixing said they said it felt strong."

The worrying experience with Zitao in the plaza had distracted Junmyeon thoroughly, as had his conversation with Kyungsoo, but now that Jongdae mentioned it, he could feel the familiar throb of power, at least two separate focal points vying for attention. Both were coming from somewhere to the north and very slightly to the east. London and Lyon made sense. More than anything, Junmyeon couldn't believe he'd let himself drop so far off the grid that Yixing was forced to relay messages from Paris through Jongdae. 

"Okay," Junmyeon said. "Okay. You're still in Berlin?"

"Yeah. I'm supposed to fly Minseok to Yunnan tomorrow morning."

Minseok must be the name of the synecologist Jongdae had been looking for. "We're going to have to change that." Junmyeon rubbed between his eyes, thinking hard. "Bring Minseok to Lyon this evening. I'll bring Zitao and meet you there. We'll find whoever's in Lyon and then you can take them back to Yunnan, I'll go to London and we'll all reconvene… Kyungsoo should be able to meet us there, too. He'll be flying in from Arizona."

"I'm dizzy just thinking about it." But Junmyeon knew Jongdae would do it without question. "Okay. See you in Lyon, then."

Jongdae hung up. Junmyeon stared at his phone for a long moment, not in disappointment but in apprehension—he knew that he needed to call Yixing too, and that was the call he most dreaded making. Junmyeon loved Yixing more than words would ever be able to express, and for that reason it was nearly impossible for Junmyeon to lie to him. He hadn't tried in a very long time, and he was glad that now, lying to Yixing for the first time in decades, Junmyeon was doing it by phone and not face to face. If they were in person, Junmyeon wouldn't have stood a chance.

Yixing answered on the second ring. "Don't do that to me," was the first thing he said, his voice even and perfectly modulated. That was how Junmyeon knew he was angry.

"I'm sorry," he said.

"You scared half the life out of Kyungsoo," Yixing said, by which Junmyeon knew he meant _I was terrified_. "Did you talk to him?"

"I talked to him."

"And Jongdae?"

"And Jongdae. Yixing, I'm talking to you now."

Yixing was quiet for a long moment. Junmyeon could envision him so clearly in his mind's eye that it was like Yixing was in the room with him, sitting somewhere with his phone pressed to his ear and his hand pressed to his forehead. He would be halfway covering his eyes, as he did when he was emotional and needed a moment to breathe, and his shoulders would be squared and sturdy and never once trembling under the weight of all that Junmyeon asked of him.

"What happened?" Yixing finally asked. His voice was softer, a little afraid, and in that moment Junmyeon knew he wouldn't be able to lie.

"I felt something," Junmyeon said. "I was… disoriented, I'd just woken up and it was a powerful feeling. I still don't know what it was, so I can't guess at its source, but it didn't feel good." He almost hated to say it, like this. Contrary to what he'd thought only moments before, it suddenly seemed as if it would be easier to see Yixing as he spoke, so Yixing could see how desperately sincere he was. "I'm going to visit the locus when I get back to Yunnan, and then we'll have a meeting."

"The locus," Yixing repeated. "It doesn't sound like you don't know what it was."

Junmyeon sighed. "Yixing," he said softly, suddenly exhausted. "I would tell you if I knew. As soon as I do, you know I'll come to you first."

Of course, Yixing knew. Yixing had known Junmyeon longer than any living synecologist had. They trusted each other deeply, as they had to, in order to be able to work the way they did. That, Junmyeon knew, was why Yixing didn't argue, although it broke Junmyeon's heart to think of how much he was holding back.

"Fine," Yixing finally said. "Are you safe?"

"Of course I'm safe," Junmyeon said. "If everything goes as planned we'll be in Kunming by the day after tomorrow. Jongdae and I are going to Lyon this evening and I'll be in London tomorrow, and then we'll be coming back."

"I hate it when you say that," Yixing said.

"What?"

"'If everything goes as planned.' It always makes me wonder how things might not."

Junmyeon laughed quietly. "Things almost always go as planned, Yixing."

"Almost always."

The two of them fell silent, just listening to the silence between them, until finally Junmyeon glanced up at the clock and then stirred. "I should go," he said. "The new synecologist, from Barcelona, he's Chinese. Half Chinese. His name is Zitao. You'll like him, I think. He's two heads taller than me but he's just a kid, he'll need someone to look after him."

The noise Yixing made was equal parts affection and amusement. "I'm good at that," he said, and underneath those words Junmyeon could hear a different message: _I've been looking after you all this time, I have plenty of practice._.

"I know," he said. "I'll see you in Kunming."

Yixing didn't say goodbye. He never did, but Junmyeon knew when the line went dead.

 _If everything goes as planned._ Junmyeon sighed, stretched, and stood to go wake Zitao.


	6. Chapter 6

By the time he was over the border between Colorado and New Mexico, Kyungsoo already knew he was heading in the right direction.

Being on Navajo land probably helped. Kyungsoo liked the Navajo—they didn't associate themselves with synecology, but they maintained their power in a way that made everything flow easily, a kind of harmony with the natural rhythms of the planet that Kyungsoo appreciated deeply. It made it so much easier to focus on the fluctuations he was following when there was so little white noise to confuse him.

Driving out of Colorado and toward the southwest meant the forests gave way to scrubland and, as Kyungsoo passed the Canyon of the Ancients, the scrubland gave way to red mesa and rock formations that jutted proudly from the earth. In some ways it was strange to watch the landscape change, but in other ways it was calming—maybe because of Kyungsoo's power, earth and stone and strength, but maybe just because of the absence of people. 

It wasn't exactly that Kyungsoo didn't like humankind. His life's work was dedicated to their protection, in its own way, and he appreciated humankind in all its complexity and simplicity and perfection and imperfection. But he had to admit, he wasn't the biggest fan of people.

He had just been doing this a long time, that was all. Long enough to be a little tired.

It was still early when Kyungsoo left—he liked the forests most in the early morning—but by the time he passed through Show Low it was early afternoon and warm. Not blazingly hot, thank goodness, even in Arizona the temperature didn't climb too high at the end of April, but warm enough that Kyungsoo left his jacket in the car when he went into a motel to make sure he was heading in the right direction.

"Yeah, it'll take you about an hour and a half, two hours if you worry about the speed limit," the girl behind the counter said. "You'll get some sights, the highway takes you through the Fort Apache reservation and there are some canyons and stuff around there." She popped her gum and looked at Kyungsoo curiously. "Why are you going down that way?"

For a second Kyungsoo paused, and the girl seemed to realize how forward she was being. "I mean, not that it's my business," she said, waving her hands briefly in front of her. "Just, you know, it's not really a hot tourist destination, even for a place called Top-Of-The-World, and especially not this time of year. I'm pretty sure you're the first person who's ever asked directions and I've worked here kind of a while."

Fair enough. "I'm going to meet someone," Kyungsoo said. He smiled, very slightly, mostly to put the girl at ease. "Thanks for your help."

"No problem," the girl said, and although she still looked curious, she didn't say anything more.

There was barely anyone else on the road, and Kyungsoo didn't care much for the speed limit. Junmyeon and the others tended to fly where they needed to go, but Kyungsoo liked driving—he liked how solitary it was, accompanied by no sound except his tires on the concrete and the noise of wind. It was an hour and twenty minutes, barely, by the time he was driving up on Top-Of-The-World, looking for the truck stop with the diner attached.

It was, Kyungsoo thought, the only truck stop in town, and therefore not hard to find. It was also not very busy, and in a way that was good—it would make it a little easier for Kyungsoo to find the one he was looking for.

*

"Cheeseburger no onion extra pickle order up!" 

Chanyeol slammed his hand on the bell and turned back to the grill, where there were another three patties still grilling away. The heat made the burn on the inside of his forearm ache, and he shook it out as he waited, spatula in hand, to flip the patties onto their pinker sides. Three nights ago he'd lit his sofa on fire with a cigarette, and he had the bandage on his arm to prove it, from where he'd managed to put the fire out but hadn't quite managed not to light his sleeve on fire in the process.

"Yo."

Tony's voice. Chanyeol turned back and looked at him through the service counter. "What's up?"

"It's slow," Tony said.

"Oh, boy, here we go."

"It's slow, there's just the three guys in the corner and I've gotta have a smoke or I'm gonna bash my fuckin' brains in, dude. Let me take a break."

Chanyeol rolled his eyes. "You took your break like an hour ago," he pointed out. Tony, selectively deaf, declined to respond. "What the fuck."

The night before, Chanyeol had alternated between adrenaline-filled alertness and fever dreams so vivid they felt real. He had barely slept and he felt it, his eyes heavy, thoughts moving as if through molasses. He'd felt like this for weeks, and he was way, way too tired to give a shit when or where Tony took a break.

"Fifteen minutes, you're such an asshole," Chanyeol said. "I'm gonna tell Dean he should fire your ass before the end of the month—"

"Fuck yeah dude you're the best love you no homo," Tony said, all in one breath, and disappeared before Chanyeol could finish his threat. 

Yeah, no homo. Tony always said that, like Chanyeol didn't know how many blowjobs he'd gotten from dudes next to the dumpsters behind the diner. Maybe Chanyeol didn't have the best taste in men but at least he'd never gotten oral next to literal garbage.

He flipped the patties and let them cook, finished up the burgers and brought them out to the table at the far end of the diner. It was a bunch of regulars, the same kind of guys who always busted Chanyeol's balls about being tall, about being Asian, about being trailer trash. Not the kind of guys who Chanyeol wanted to spend a long time with, but he grinned and bore it and brought them all another round of beers before heading back to the counter to wipe up.

The diner always slowed down in the early afternoon, and that was why Tony always took a double break. He said it was for a smoke and probably thought Chanyeol assumed cigarette, but he always came back reeking of weed. At least Tony didn't work in the kitchen. Chanyeol might want to burn the diner to the fucking ground in the middle of the night most days, but he knew how to keep the line moving on his own.

The bell over the door jingled and Chanyeol said, without turning around, "Tony, if you take a break without restocking napkins one more time, I'm gonna do something to you that will land me on Dateline."

There was a moment of silence, and then a soft, higher-pitched voice cleared its throat.

Chanyeol spun around. "Oh, shit," he said. "Shit, I'm sorry, I thought you were my coworker."

The guy at the counter was small, that was Chanyeol's first impression. Small and very serious. Asian, too, which was a little uncommon in these parts, as Chanyeol well knew. Most of the town population was white or Latino. "It's fine," he said. He didn't look upset, but he was studying Chanyeol carefully, and Chanyeol wondered whether he was going to get his ass handed to him by Dean later that night.

"What can I get you?" Chanyeol asked.

"Coffee, please." The guy took a seat on one of the stools. "It's not very busy at this time of day, is it?"

He didn't seem like the type for small talk, so the question took Chanyeol slightly by surprise. Still, at a truck stop diner it was hard not to be used to bullshit questions, so Chanyeol took it in stride as he pulled out a coffee cup and set it on the counter. "Nah," he said. "We get a big breakfast crowd—well, I mean, 'big,' you know, for a town of 300 people that's like ten customers. And the truckers usually pass through in the evening for the showers and dinner." 

It was just past one-thirty, now. Except for the day drinking crew in the corner, the diner was deserted.

The guy nodded. "Only 300 people?"

"Probably closer to 200 now," Chanyeol said. "I read one time that in 2010 it was something like 230. People like to leave but not a whole lot of them like to come back."

And why would they? If they had the opportunity to get out, they should take it. Chanyeol would have, if he had the chance. 

"Hmm." The guy waited as Chanyeol poured out his coffee, then wrapped both hands around the mug, although he didn't drink just yet. Probably for the best, the diner coffee was shit and Chanyeol knew it. 

"So," Chanyeol said. Whether it was exhaustion or illness or just pure idiocy, something compelled him to keep up the conversation. "What brings you through?"

"What makes you think I'm passing through?"

Chanyeol snorted. "We get two types of traffic here," he said. "Through traffic and outbound. Nobody comes here to stay."

It wasn't exactly the best sell that he'd ever given for Top-Of-The-World, Bumfuck, Arizona. Still, it had the guy hiding a small smile as he lifted his coffee cup to his lips, and Chanyeol counted that, at least, as a minor victory. His head ached, but at least he could make the customers smile.

Realistically, he should have gone back into the kitchen to prep, but—with the excuse that Tony wasn't back yet—Chanyeol lingered out behind the counter. He had already restocked the napkins and there wasn't enough by way of dirty cutlery to warrant dealing with it, so Chanyeol just got comfortable, leaning against the shelving. 

"You smoke?" the guy asked. 

"Huh?" 

Chanyeol looked down at his hands. At some point during his getting-comfortable process, he had pulled his lighter out of his apron pocket and begun flicking it idly with one thumb. "Yeah," he admitted, rolling the striker and watching the flame come to life. "I'm trying to quit."

"They say it'll kill you."

"Yeah, they sure do." Dean told him that all the time. Tony, too, even though Tony smoked probably more than Chanyeol did. "Do you?"

"No," the guy said. "Just curious."

"Sure." Chanyeol dropped the lighter back into his apron pocket. "I'm Chanyeol, by the way. Technically line cook, but in reality this place would fall the fuck—sorry. Would fall apart without me."

"Kyungsoo," the guy said. "You're Korean?"

Oh, boy. "At some point in the family lineage, I guess," Chanyeol said with a shrug. "I don't know. I was in the system."

Kyungsoo's brows furrowed slightly, a faint line appearing between his eyes, and then the expression was gone as quickly as it came. "I see. I'm sorry, that was insensitive."

"Nah, it's fine. You're looking at one of, like, five Asians in the whole town, so it's not like I'm not used to it." Chanyeol pulled the lighter out again, rolling it around in his palm and pushing his thumb against the wheel just to feel it, although he didn't light it again. "What about you? You Korean?"

Kyungsoo nodded, then said something in a language Chanyeol couldn't recognize, but assumed was Korean.

"Sorry," he said, gesturing to himself. "English and situational Spanish. Hola."

Again, that tiny grin. Somehow, earning it felt like a minor victory. "Hola," Kyungsoo said. "It's fine. My English is decent enough by now."

"Decent?" Chanyeol felt his eyebrows climbing up his forehead. "If you hadn't just implied it's not your first language I never would have guessed. It's better than decent, trust me." Way better than Chanyeol's Spanish, although his limited knowledge could get him through basic conversations, at least. "You never did tell me why you're coming through, by the way."

Kyungsoo took another sip of coffee. "I was coming to meet someone," he said, simply.

"Did you find them?"Chanyeol asked.

For the life of him, he couldn't guess at the meaning of Kyungsoo's smile, nor the way he spread his hands out on the counter, both palms flat. "Yes," Kyungsoo said. "I did."

*

Chanyeol, Kyungsoo felt, was going to be powerful.

From the moment he had stepped into the diner he had known it—the energy that rolled off of Chanyeol came in waves so strong it was hard to push them back, the pressure of his oncoming realization sitting heavy on Kyungsoo's skin. He had looked like hell, too, dark circles under his eyes, the exhaustion, the incessant flicking of his lighter. And nonetheless, he had managed to hold a full conversation, until Chanyeol's coworker came back and he was forced to retreat to the kitchen. Kyungsoo was impressed.

There were no motels in Top-Of-The-World, so Kyungsoo parked his car on the side of a frontage road and tilted his seat all the way back. He doubted that he would sleep, things being as they were, but it was better to get some rest while he could. Once Chanyeol had his realization, it would be nothing but a long flight back to China, and Kyungsoo wanted to be alert.

All the way out here in among the canyons and red rock, there was little by way of light pollution. It meant that when Kyungsoo leaned his head against the window and looked up at the night sky, there wasn't a thing in the way of him seeing the full majesty of the stars, rippling through the sky. Although Kyungsoo had both feet firmly planted on the ground—as he had to—he could still appreciate a good night view.

He called Jongdae.

"Good morning," Kyungsoo said, when Jongdae answered.

"Good evening," Jongdae said back. He didn't sound fully alert, but he was at least awake. "Where are you?"

"Top-Of-The-World," Kyungsoo said. Jongdae made a confused noise. "Arizona."

"They really named a city Top-Of-The-World?"

"I wouldn't call it a city." Kyungsoo wouldn't even really call it a town. More like a small community, brought together more by necessity than anything else. "But yes."

"Wow." There came the sound of chewing, briefly, and when Jongdae spoke again his voice was oddly muffled. Kyungsoo assumed he was eating breakfast. It would be early morning in Europe, wherever Jongdae was now. "Did you find the newbie?"

"Yes. I think he's going to be a fire synecologist."

"Yeah? What makes you think so?"

"I met him today. His name is Chanyeol. He didn't stop playing with his lighter nearly the entire time we were talking."

"Could just be a habit."

"It's possible, but I don't know. We'll see." Kyungsoo paused. "Where are you?"

"Lyon," Jongdae said. "It's me and Junmyeon, plus two newcomers. Minseok and Zitao. I picked Minseok up in Berlin and Junmyeon picked Zitao up in Barcelona. I'm going out today to try and find our target"—Kyungsoo snorted—"in Lyon, and then I'm taking the three new ones to Kunming while Junmyeon goes to London."

"Western Europe is busy these days," Kyungsoo said. "How's Junmyeon? Has he spoken to Yixing?"

"Yesterday, I think. He's fine. Quieter than usual."

Kyungsoo wasn't surprised. After the conversation he'd had with Junmyeon yesterday—and the conversation Kyungsoo presumed Junmyeon had with Yixing—he couldn't imagine Junmyeon would be anything other than emotionally drained. "Look after him," he said to Jongdae.

"I always do. Good luck in America. Text me a picture."

Kyungsoo snorted again and hung up, but he did text Jongdae a picture of the Milky Way, spreading wide and clear above him. Jongdae sent him back a cheerful smiling face, and Kyungsoo couldn't help but smile in return, if only to himself. 

Jongdae had come to them not long after Kyungsoo had—a handful of decades, maybe, or a century. Junmyeon had been the one to find him, in a hut in Pyeongyang, alone and terrified and abandoned by people who thought him cursed. His realization had been weeks ago, and it wasn't Jongdae's fault that lightning storms followed him wherever he went—he just didn't yet know how to control himself.

Now, Jongdae was in perfect control. He was a good synecologist—one of the best. But he was still young, in so many ways, and though they would all trust Jongdae with their lives, Junmyeon was still hesitant to put too much on his shoulders.

Kyungsoo could understand it. He'd seen synecologists broken before, by the weight of it all.

It was just past eleven, and something in the distance stirred. Not something—someone, a flicker of power that traveled down Kyungsoo's spine like a caress. Chanyeol was awake. 

For a long while, Kyungsoo sat in his car, eyes closed, tracking Chanyeol's movement through the currents. He was moving southeast, across the highway—a slow and haphazard path that would take him past Kyungsoo's car, if he kept it up. It felt uncertain, like Chanyeol needed to move but didn't quite know where to go. Kyungsoo supposed the forest was better than anywhere else—realizations went unnoticed by anyone who wasn't sensitive to the planet's energy, but there were so many Navajo living in this town that Kyungsoo suspected a realization in the town center would wake at least a few. 

By now Chanyeol had crossed the highway, so Kyungsoo climbed out of his care to follow. He kept his distance, moving behind Chanyeol as he headed first into the scrubby vegetation immediately next to the highway, then the trees beyond, a thicker patch of almost-forest that made it difficult for Kyungsoo to see in the dim light of the moon. 

Somewhere in the depths of the forest, Chanyeol drew to a halt. Kyungsoo could feel the pressure increasing, but this far away from the town and its population, he didn't feel the need to be right next to Chanyeol at the very moment of his realization. Junmyeon liked to be there, but Kyungsoo—it took him longer to collect himself, up close, and right now Kyungsoo wanted to retain as much of his senses as he could.

He found a place where he could see Chanyeol from a distance and leaned against a tree to watch. In a small clearing, Chanyeol was crouched down, his hands behind his neck. He looked sick, and Kyungsoo felt a pang of sympathy. 

_You'll feel better soon_ , he thought. _Just let it happen_.

The coalescence of power just before a realization, to Kyungsoo, always felt like an immense pressure, pushing down all over his body. It felt like that now, like being squeezed in a vice grip that grew tighter with every second the clock ticked closer to the moment of Chanyeol's realization. His breath caught in his throat involuntarily, and Kyungsoo struggled to inhale, struggled to keep his eyes open and watch until the moment came. When it did, Kyungsoo would want to be there as soon as he could—he didn't want to miss it.

When it came, though—when it came there was no way Kyungsoo could have missed it, because when Chanyeol's power burst forth from him, so did the flames.

*

Chanyeol had just lit the fucking forest on fire, which would have been awesome if he wasn't reasonably sure he was going to die.

He had lit the forest on fire. 

Ever since he was a kid Chanyeol had liked fire, in the way kids tend to like things that they know are dangerous—he'd played with matches, lit candles in his teenage bedroom. It had scared his foster parents a little, made them think he was a little unbalanced, but he'd never tried to burn the house down. He'd never wanted to. Instead he just lit matches and let them burn, and when he was older, flicked lighters just to see the flame. 

It had been different, for the last couple of weeks. The fire in his trailer, catching his sofa on fire with a cigarette. Smaller fires in dustbins, on the grills at work. Blades of grass sacrificed to his lighter. It had been different. Not bad, not dangerous, but different, except now Chanyeol had lit the forest on fire and he was going to die without even knowing how. 

The flames were hot and yellow-orange and climbing slowly up the trees around him, spreading out through the scrub and the grasses. It wouldn't take long to reach the town. They didn't have much by way of a fire department, Chanyeol knew, and nobody would be expecting a forest fire at this time of year. It had barely hit seventy-five this week. He was going to die, and maybe everyone else in Top-Of-The-World would die too. 

"Fuck me," Chanyeol said out loud, then choked on smoke and coughed.

"I can't believe you," said another voice. Through teary, squinting eyes Chanyeol could make out the shape of another person, smaller in size but not in stature. He looked familiar, the shape of him, and a few more blinks cleared Chanyeol's vision up enough to recognize him as the guy from the diner earlier. Kyungsoo.

He looked bigger somehow, framed by flames, his serious features thrown into sharp relief. 

"What the—"

"Don't move," Kyungsoo said, sounding irritable. He crouched down and put his hands to the ground, and when he came up—when he came up the earth came with him, under his hands, in two pillars that connected Kyungsoo's hands to the dirt. 

"What the _fuck_ ," Chanyeol said again, emphatically.

Kyungsoo flicked both wrists, and the dirt around the bases of the trees around them climbed up the trunks, stifling the flames. In the grasses and scrub brush too, red dust and dirt smothered the fire until it was nothing more than smoke and residual embers, quickly fading. Kyungsoo's palms were dirty, Chanyeol noticed, moments before Kyungsoo dropped his hands and wiped his palms on his pants.

"I don't do drugs," Chanyeol said. He was breathing too quickly, and he forced himself to slow down or he would have a panic attack and get absolutely nowhere.

"That's reassuring."

"So I don't want you to get the wrong idea about this question, but, did I just hallucinate or did I just light the whole forest on fire and you just put it out with magic?"

Kyungsoo reached up and rubbed his forehead, leaving streaks of red dirt behind that were barely visible in the moonlight. Now that the fire was out, he seemed much less imposing, more like the normal guy that Chanyeol had met in the diner a few hours before. A normal guy who was apparently also an earthbender. "You didn't light the _whole_ forest on fire," Kyungsoo said with careful emphasis. "And it wasn't magic."

"But I did light part of it," Chanyeol said, just to confirm. "And you did put it out."

"Yes." Kyungsoo sighed. "I should have known better. It's not that common for power bursts to happen like that during a realization but—I should have known. You're strong."

Even though Kyungsoo's English was perfect, Chanyeol still felt like he was listening to someone speak a different language. Or, rather, like they were all words that he understood separately, but put together in that particular order, he couldn't make heads or tails of them. "Okay," he said. "Can you explain this to me like I'm a kid?"

Kyungsoo's mouth quirked up faintly, like Chanyeol had said something funny. "Can we move, first?" he asked. "This smoke is giving me a headache."

"Yeah. Fuck. Yeah, sorry." 

Chanyeol followed Kyungsoo back out of the forest, toward the highway from which he'd come. He hadn't been sure what had driven him to leave his trailer and make his way across the highway, but he was glad, oddly, that he had. If he hadn't, who knew what kind of damage he would have done?

Kyungsoo led him back to a car, sitting dark on the shoulder of the frontage road that ran alongside the highway. "This is mine," Kyungsoo said.

"Okay," Chanyeol said. "Listen, if I end up on Dateline I want it to be because I finally murdered my good-for-nothing coworker, not because I got kidnapped and dismembered and had my body parts spread along Route 60."

Kyungsoo blinked. Somehow, Chanyeol didn't feel like he was making any more sense to Kyungsoo than Kyungsoo was making to him, but he had to keep talking to keep himself from freaking all the way out.

"Not to say that I think you're a serial killer," Chanyeol added. "But, I mean, you never know, right?"

Kyungsoo, who had been standing next to his car, leaned forward and rested his forehead briefly against the doorframe. "Okay," he finally said, with his eyes still closed. "Are you more concerned about me being a serial killer, or knowing how you set the forest on fire with your mind five minutes ago?"

He seemed serious. Oddly so, all things considered. Chanyeol had been considering writing this off as a fever dream, but he felt as though any dream rendition he made of Kyungsoo would inevitably be less serious and more silly. Chanyeol didn't think he could conjure up this much seriousness if he tried. "The second, I guess," he said. 

"Do you want to have this conversation here?"

"As opposed to in your car? Yeah."

"Fine." Kyungsoo straightened up. His expression was neutral, but Chanyeol got the impression he wasn't thrilled. "Let's have a seat, then."

"We'll get dirty…"

"We're both covered with ash and dirt right now," Kyungsoo said. "We're dirty. Just sit."

Chanyeol sat.

Kyungsoo sat beside him, about two feet away, and together they were silent. In his mind, Chanyeol envisioned what had just happened—the increasing sensation of illness, followed by an overwhelming heat and rush and then the awareness of flames all around him. He hadn't brought his lighter out with him, hadn't even taken a cigarette, so there was no way that Chanyeol had dropped a spark that lit the fire. And yet, and yet, that burst of heat that had seemed to flood its way out from his limbs…

"I'm not as good at this part as the others," Kyungsoo said, somewhat abruptly. "I'm sorry for the bedside manner."

"Which part?" Chanyeol asked, confused.

Instead of answering, Kyungsoo closed his eyes momentarily. When he did speak, it was without opening them. "It wasn't exactly with your mind that you lit the forest on fire," he said. "It was more likely with your hands, and very poorly controlled power."

"Power," Chanyeol repeated.

"Yes. It's called synecology." Something about Kyungsoo's posture—maybe the tension in his shoulders—made him seem frustrated, almost. "It means… you have the ability to tap into and to a degree control the energies of the planet."

"The energies of the _planet_?" Chanyeol said. "Dude, I don't know if anyone has ever told you this, but you're crazy."

Kyungsoo sighed. He didn't sound angry—he sounded resigned, which was strange. "People have told me that a lot," he said. "But that doesn't make it less true. Your specialty is fire, apparently, like mine is earth. What just happened to you was your realization, your powers manifesting, and it was those powers that started the fire. It was my powers that put it out."

Even though Chanyeol still felt oddly dissociated, disbelieving of almost everything Kyungsoo was saying, he did notice that he felt less like panicking now than he had ten minutes ago, which was a good sign.

"So I'm a firebender," Chanyeol said. "And you're an earthbender."

"What?"

"Avatar. It's a TV show."

"Oh," Kyungsoo said. "I don't have a TV."

Of all the things to set Chanyeol off, that was it. Of course Kyungsoo didn't have a TV. Kyungsoo was small and serious and strange, probably crazy, maybe a firebender, and Chanyeol couldn't help himself—he flopped back onto the grass and burst into laughter, tears of mirth pricking at the corners of his eyes. It wasn't that funny, not really, but laughing made him feel better, made him feel more grounded in reality and less like he was having a really bad trip.

When the giggling subsided, Chanyeol wiped his eyes and looked up at Kyungsoo, who was looking down at him. "What the fuck is happening to me?" Chanyeol asked.

Something in Kyungsoo's face softened. "I know that it's weird," he said. "It's going to be weird for a while. I was in your position too, but that was a long time ago and it's easy for me to forget how scared I was."

Kyungsoo didn't look that much older than him. "How long ago?" Chanyeol asked.

"Are you sure you want to know the answer to that question?"

"Pretty sure."

"Six hundred and thirty two years." 

"Holy shit." If Chanyeol's foster mother had been here, she would have washed his mouth out with soap three times for the way he was talking tonight. "Listen, you seem really nice? Which is weird, because actually everything you're saying is making me even more convinced that you're a serial killer, or at least someone from a cult who's trying to recruit me."

Kyungsoo sighed. "Should I just show you?"

He pressed one palm to the ground, then looked at Chanyeol, who nodded. Whatever. If this was a fever dream he could do what he wanted, and if it wasn't, then he was probably going to end up on Dateline, so he may as well get what he could out of it before he got dismembered.

A small furrow appeared between Kyungsoo's brows, and in the space between them, the ground caved in. Not deeply—no more than six inches—but it took Chanyeol by surprise, made him scoot a few inches away. 

"What the…"

As he watched, the hole in the ground expanded, becoming less like a hole and more like a canyon. The walls shifted, fell away, climbed up—there was no way something like that could happen naturally, from a sinkhole or an animal burrow caved in. Chanyeol had seen a lot of weird things in his life, but he could think of nothing to explain this, the way that the four-foot-square block of land between his body and Kyungsoo's was rapidly becoming a miniature of the Grand Canyon, in exquisite, painstaking detail.

The dirt stopped moving, finally, and Kyungsoo lifted his hand up off the ground. "It was the first thing I could think of," he said. "I was hoping it would be enough to convince you."

Chanyeol leaned in close, still stretched out on the ground. The miniature Grand Canyon was perfect, as far as he could tell—and, he realized, not only made from dirt. Kyungsoo, whatever Kyungsoo had done, had changed the shape of the very rock beneath them. 

He sat up. "I feel like I'm dreaming," Chanyeol said.

"I don't blame you," Kyungsoo said. "I'm not even… necessarily asking you to trust me. But I am asking you to believe me, because if you don't…"

He trailed off, but it sounded less like a threat than some unspoken worry. Chanyeol shifted. "If I don’t, then what?" he asked.

"With your powers and no training, it will be… difficult for you to control yourself," Kyungsoo said. "You'll keep starting fires, but you won't always be able to control when or where." He winced, briefly, and then his forehead smoothed out and he said, "When I was new to synecology, I went with Junmyeon—our branch leader—to find a synecologist in Cambodia who turned out to be a fire synecologist. She didn't believe us, and we never—you know, we don't force people to come with us, not ever. So we let her be, and a week later she burned down her entire village and all the people in it."

"Including herself?" Chanyeol asked.

"No," Kyungsoo said. "The fire you make will never touch you. But it will burn faster and hotter than any natural fire would, and that makes it very dangerous if you don't know what you're doing with it."

He was quiet, his voice even, but there was a shadow of pain in his eyes that Chanyeol didn't imagine anyone could fake. And it wasn't only that, it wasn't only Kyungsoo's sincerity—it was just the facts of it, that there had been a fire in the forest and that Chanyeol had been there. That he had seen the earth move in time with Kyungsoo's hands to put that fire out. That he had just watched Kyungsoo build the Grand Canyon from red rock and dirt in a minute and a half. 

Maybe this was a fever dream. Still…

"So what happens now?" Chanyeol asked. "Assuming I believe you. I'm not sure I do, but—hypothetically."

"If you believe me and choose to come with me to be trained," Kyungsoo said, "I'll bring you back to China, where you'll meet the rest of the East Asian branch. We'll train you for as long as it takes for you to learn to control yourself, and when you've mastered your powers, you'll be free to go. Most synecologists choose to continue working with us, but it's up to you in what capacity."

Chanyeol took a deep breath and exhaled it. He didn't believe in magic, not really—he never had. But this, he sensed, wasn't just a cult overlord trick to get him to follow. This, with the evidence in front of his eyes and all over his clothes, seemed more concrete than he knew how to explain.

"I don't speak Chinese," Chanyeol said, faintly. "And I don't have any savings."

"Most of us speak English," Kyungsoo said. "And you won't need money. It seems a little odd to say it myself, but synecology has deep pockets. As long as you're with us you'll be provided for."

Chanyeol rolled onto his back in the grass again and stared up at the sky. The Milky Way was bright above them. He had no reason to stay in Top-Of-The-World, anyway—he had stayed until now out of necessity, not for any particular love of the place. He wondered what the Milky Way would look like from China. If he would even be able to see it.

What did he really have to lose?

"Okay," Chanyeol said. From the corner of his eye, he saw Kyungsoo glance down at him. "But if we have to go to China, I should probably change my clothes."


	7. Chapter 7

It was, Jongdae quickly discovered, a little bit chaotic to have all four of them in the apartment in Lyon.

In terms of space, it was fine. The apartment was more like a house, really, two levels and five rooms, three bedrooms, and more open space than Jongdae cared to measure. They could easily live there for weeks, the four of them, without really crossing paths. That wasn't the problem.

The problem was, mostly, language. 

Zitao, Jongdae gathered, spoke Spanish, Chinese, and passable but limited English; Minseok spoke German, some Korean, and just a little more English than Zitao. Between Jongdae and Junmyeon, they had all those languages covered and more, but it did take up a fair amount of time trying to coordinate movements when every instruction needed to be translated from Korean into Spanish, or Spanish into German, or Chinese into Korean, and so forth. Jongdae could only imagine how much worse it would be when they found the synecologist in Lyon.

"What do you think we should do?" Jongdae asked Junmyeon, in the late evening, after they'd gotten Zitao and Minseok mostly settled in. They were speaking Russian, having somehow arrived at an unspoken agreement to use it as their go-to language when they didn't want to be overheard. "How likely is the French one to speak English?"

"At all? Very," Junmyeon said. "Fluently? Less likely. And then there's the question of whether he or she will _want_ to speak English regardless of fluency level."

Jongdae groaned. He and Junmyeon, for now, had taken up a pair of chairs on the veranda that overlooked the street below. Minseok and Zitao were inside—Junmyeon had told them to take care of any last-minute business, saying goodbyes to friends or whatever, but had strictly forbade them from mentioning anything about synecology whatsoever.

Junmyeon, for his part, was quiet, looking pensively out at the city. Jongdae turned his head that direction too, surveying the landscape. Lyon was very different than Almaty—bigger, for one, and flatter. Jongdae was used to seeing mountains in the distance, but there was no such landscape here, just city stretching as far as the eye could see.

To his left, Junmyeon stirred. "I don't know what to think of all this," he said. The words sounded like they were coming from a place deep inside him, somewhere far away. "Between the two in here and the one Kyungsoo is picking up in Arizona—plus the one in Lyon, and the one in London… that's five new synecologists within days of each other."

"As many in the last three days as I've met in the last century," Jongdae said. 

Junmyeon sighed. "Something is going on," he said.

"What do you think it is?"

"It's hard to say." Junmyeon's gaze was unfocused, idly tracking cars along the street beneath them, but Jongdae could tell that his attention was sharp. "The way we've always understood it, new synecologists are brought into their powers in accordance with how much the planet needs them. We're not plentiful."

Each branch of synecology was only responsible for between 15 and 20 synecologists at a time. As far as Jongdae knew, the total number of synecologists alive now—trained ones, not new—was 137. At the East Asian branch there were 17, the youngest of whom was approaching her 187th birthday. And now five newcomers.

"Are the other branches experiencing the same? A flood of new realizations?"

"Earlier this afternoon I sent emails out to the leaders of the other branches," Junmyeon said. "I've only heard back from Western Europe and Africa so far, but they each said they've gained six or seven new synecologists within the last week."

Jongdae whistled under his breath. "So the planet needs them," he said, simply. "And we just need to figure out why."

"When you put it that way it sounds so easy," Junmyeon said with a laugh, shaking his head. 

It was a good thing, to hear Junmyeon laugh.

"I mean, it's not like the planet tries to be complex," Jongdae said. "Right? Whatever her needs are, at least in my experience they tend to be pretty straightforward." But he was aware, as always, that Junmyeon was nearly twice as old as him, had been doing this for nearly twice as long. "You don't think so?"

"I don't disagree," Junmyeon said. "The needs are usually straightforward, it's just getting the core of those needs that can be tricky sometimes." 

He smiled at Jongdae, warm and open and without a trace of artifice or condescension. Junmyeon was aware of his own power, Jongdae knew, and of his own status within the organization. He was one of the oldest living synecologists in the world, easily the oldest at the East Asian branch, the kind of legendary presence that made the younger synecologists whisper nervously among themselves when they passed by him in the halls of the training center at Kunming. Jongdae had felt that way too when he was new—like Junmyeon was untouchable, unbreakable.

That had been before the battle, though, and afterwards, when Jongdae had been forced by necessity to become one of the eight senior synecologists operating out of Yunnan, he had come to learn that Junmyeon was nothing like the cold, awe-inspiring leader the whispers had made him out to be. He was aware of his power, but never dismissive of others; he was aware of his status but always willing to listen to opinions and share responsibilities. He was a good leader, Jongdae thought. A good friend.

In the silence between them, the door behind them creaked open and Minseok stuck his head out. "Sorry to interrupt," he said.

"You're fine." Junmyeon switched easily into German, leaning over the back of the chair to look up at Minseok. That smile was still there, lingering. "What's going on?"

"It's just—Zitao and I are kind of hungry, so—"

"You and Zitao have been hanging out?" 

"Yeah, we've been speaking terrible English to each other," Minseok said with a laugh. He looked much better now than he had yesterday, his presence no longer sucking the warmth out of the air. The color in his skin had returned, too, and with it his personality, it seemed. Jongdae wasn't entirely surprised to hear that he'd managed to draw Zitao out of his shell even in a second language.

Junmyeon stood up and stretched, then offered Jongdae a hand up. "Well, we may as well get something to eat, then," he said. "There's a noodle takeaway on the corner that I like, myself."

*

Jongdae awoke in the middle of the following night to a pounding heart, breath coming fast. He'd fallen asleep on the couch in the living room, but something—he wasn't sure yet just what—had pulled him awake all at once.

"Good," Junmyeon said from the kitchen, "you're awake."

If Junmyeon was awake, that meant it wasn't Jongdae's dreams that had woken him up. "That soon, huh?" he said, rubbing at his eyes. "Good thing we didn't decide to come to Lyon tomorrow."

Junmyeon nodded. The living room was dark, but the kitchen was just light enough to cast dark shadows under his eyes. He looked exhausted, and Jongdae wondered when he had last slept. In his t-shirt and jeans, Junmyeon looked small and somehow fragile, even though Jongdae knew he was anything but. 

"I'll go out," Jongdae said.

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah, it's fine," Jongdae said. Already he was grabbing the sweatshirt he'd taken off earlier. It wasn't exactly cold in Lyon, but neither was it warm, especially not in the middle of the night. "Just get some rest, okay?"

For a moment it almost looked like Junmyeon wanted to argue, but Jongdae held his gaze, and then all the resistance went out of Junmyeon's shoulders almost all at once. "Fine," Junmyeon said. "But call me if you need anything."

"I will."

The streets were mostly empty at this time of night, which made it easy for Jongdae to follow the traces of power emanating from their soon-to-be synecologist. He wasn't far away, Jongdae thought—a few blocks at most, heading east, radiating power like a beacon. Something about it felt clear and pure, easier for Jongdae to trace by a long shot than Minseok had been. That was almost a relief, because it was, according to Jongdae's cell phone, nearly three in the morning and Jongdae really didn't want to have to work for this.

He turned up a narrow road, setting himself on a path that would eventually intersect with that of the new synecologist. The intensity of his power was rising, that was for sure, but it wasn't nearing a critical point just yet. Jongdae still had a little time. 

Another turn. The shadows around him deepened. Idly, he sent a text message to Junmyeon, knowing that despite Jongdae's admonition to get some rest, that Junmyeon would be awake until he heard from Jongdae. `didn't expect lyon to get darker than almaty at night.`

Junmyeon's response: `It doesn't, usually. Streetlamps are on almost all night.`

Jongdae looked around. There wasn't a single streetlamp he could make out, nor, for that matter, any lights on in the buildings. The only way that the alley was lit was by Jongdae's phone and by the residual light pollution glow from the city, barely managing to illuminate the street in front of him. 

`huh.` Jongdae tucked his phone back into his pocket and picked up his pace. He was only a block away from the new one now, keeping more or less parallel with the power signature he could feel. If he sped up just a little, by the next intersection he might be able to head them off, and if he could do that without scaring the shit out of them then there was a chance Jongdae would be able to get them back to the apartment before the realization.

From the next block came a sound not unlike the shattering of glass, and then the rapid footfalls of someone starting to run. 

It was the new synecologist. On instinct, Jongdae ran too, trying his best to keep up. He could sense the new synecologist's power signature changing, fading as he took off in a different direction, and Jongdae changed his path too, heading north and then east in an effort to catch up with the footfalls he could hear ahead of him. 

Every turn the new synecologist made seemed to take them deeper and deeper into blackness—so dark that Jongdae could no longer ignore it, could no longer pretend that the darkness was natural.

He turned down another road and the sensation slammed into him like a brick wall, the sudden and bone-deep awareness of something wrong in the currents. Jongdae felt it down to his very marrow—and he knew without even needing to ask that this was exactly the darkness that Junmyeon had felt in Barcelona, only better disguised, this time, and not brought out until the very last moment. It felt like something rotten, like breathing in the smell of putrefaction. Jongdae collapsed to his knees and threw up into the gutter.

Part of him wanted to call Junmyeon, but he knew that Junmyeon would feel it even from the apartment. He also knew that even if Junmyeon left now, he would never make it in time.

So Jongdae stumbled to his feet and ran, pushing against the sensation until he could compartmentalize it into a small and very uncomfortable part of his awareness. He could feel two points of power, now, or sort-of-power—the new synecologist, and whoever was responsible for this rot spreading into the atmosphere around them. 

Ahead of him, Jongdae could see two figures—one small and plainly terrified, back pressed to the gates of a church, and the other larger, sinister, oozing decay.

The lights may have been off, but the currents that powered them were not. Jongdae reached out and drew from the power lines under the roads, the currents in the houses, the wires stringing above their heads. Pulled it in until he could hold no more and then sent a bolt of electricity singing down the road ahead of him. It slammed into the larger man's back and sent him flying sideways, where he collided with a wall and slumped to the ground. 

With the glow of the sparks accumulated in his hands, Jongdae illuminated the man's face as he passed, making note of his features. His pale, soft flesh, dark circles under his eyes, eyes closed but twitching with the threat of wakefulness.

"Oh god please don't kill me," the new synecologist said. His voice was edging on hysterical, and the power inside him was coalescing, drawing together into its focal point. 

"I promise I won't," Jongdae said, shaking the sparks off one hand and reaching for one of the bars of the gate. The boy looked at his other hand, still crackling with electricity, and made a noise not entirely unlike a whimper. "Hold on to this."

The boy did, and just in time. Blessedly, this time the surge of power didn't send Jongdae to the floor, but it did make him stumble a little, clinging to the church gate as if for dear life. "Never get used to that," he muttered, shaking his head as if that would help to clear away the last of the cobwebs. "Are you okay?"

"Well," said the boy next to him, with a calm that Jongdae was positive he didn't actually feel, "I just got chased through the streets by someone who apparently wants to kill me, I'm pretty sure you just electrocuted him with superpowers, something inside me just exploded, and it's so dark I can barely see my own hands—but yeah, yeah, I'm okay."

Jongdae snorted. "Well, when you put it like that," he said.

Behind him, the man who Jongdae had electrocuted groaned. The shock Jongdae had delivered wasn't enough to kill him, just enough to scramble him a little, so Jongdae wasn't surprised he was coming to. It was against synecologist code to kill except in certain circumstances, and despite all the signals Jongdae's body was giving him right now, he was pretty sure these circumstances didn't count.

"Stay here," Jongdae said.

He stepped closer to the man and crouched down. As the man's eyes fluttered open, Jongdae lifted one hand in front of him so he could see the way electric currents leapt over Jongdae's skin like arcs on a Jacob's ladder. "Who are you?" Jongdae demanded, bringing his fingertips just close enough that the static raised the small hairs on the man's skin. "Who sent you?"

The man groaned again. "If it were that easy," he said with a laugh that was more of a croak.

A spark snapped against the man's cheek, and he flinched. "Who are you," Jongdae repeated, this time sounding less like he was asking a question. "I'm not going to ask you a third time."

"You don't have to," the man said. For a moment, his features blurred—blurred, right in front of Jongdae's eyes, like a poorly-exposed photograph—and then they settled again, but different this time, different in a way Jongdae couldn't quite put a finger on. He exhaled, the noise rattling in his throat, and didn't inhale again.

Jongdae sat back on his ass on the street and said, emphatically, " _Fuck_."

"Um," said the new synecologist. "Is he—"

"Dead," Jongdae said. "Fuck. Fuck, this is not good."

From the corner of his eye, he saw the new synecologist slump down into a crouch and put his head between his knees, hands curled around the back of his neck. "This has to be a nightmare," he almost-whispered. 

"I wish it were," Jongdae said. He needed to call Junmyeon. He needed to give the new guy the welcome talk. He needed to get himself under control, because there was a man dead in this alley and there were people who could take care of that, but only if Jongdae got himself together and did what he had to do. He shook the sparks off of both hands and pushed himself up into a crouch. "Let's start from the beginning. Hi. My name is Jongdae."

The new synecologist paused, then slowly looked up at him. The expression on his face was one of disbelief, like he couldn't understand why Jongdae was introducing himself now, of all times. "Baekhyun," he finally said. 

"I'm going to ask you to trust me," Jongdae said. "I know that you may not have much reason to, but I saved your life tonight, and I can answer every question you have about what's happening to you. All I need is for you to come with me to someplace safe."

There were tiny motes of dust gathering around Baekhyun's face and hands. No, Jongdae realized, not dust at all, but motes of light, the smallest particles floating around him and slowly beginning to illuminate his face. "Look at you," Jongdae said. "Light. I should have known."

Baekhyun looked down at his hands with wide eyes and swallowed hard. "I can't afford to get arrested again," he said, his voice sounding hollow.

"I have no interest in being arrested either," Jongdae said. He reached out and very carefully touched the back of Baekhyun's hand, letting his fingertips rest there. The throb of power that emanated from Baekhyun was reassuringly normal, the last of the feeling of rot having dissipated from the currents. "But we really need to get out of here."

For a long moment Baekhyun just looked at him. His expression was near devastated, at first, but then it settled into something more neutral. "Okay," Baekhyun said, straightening up. "Let's go."

*

When Jongdae opened the door to the apartment and let Baekhyun in, they were both nearly bowled over by the force of power that had gathered there, the air full of it, like clouds before a rainstorm. Junmyeon was standing in the hallway, facing the door, and behind him Jongdae could see that even Minseok and Zitao had been woken, probably by the force of Junmyeon's worry.

Even in its strength, though, it felt good—balanced, familiar. Jongdae was well-acquainted with the feeling of Junmyeon's power and to feel it here, now, felt like coming home in a way that made Jongdae falter.

As soon as Junmyeon had assessed the two of them standing in the doorway, his posture relaxed and the flood of power left the room. "We were worried," he said.

"I can feel that." Jongdae rubbed at the goosebumps that had risen on his arms. "Junmyeon," he said in French, "this is Baekhyun. He's our newest light synecologist."

There were a lot of conversations that Jongdae and Junmyeon needed to have, but none of them were conversations they could have in front of Baekhyun, Minseok and Zitao. Fortunately, Junmyeon was easily able to understand that subtlety, and anyway, having a new light synecologist was a big deal even outside the circumstances of his realization. "Light?" Junmyeon said. He offered Baekhyun a smile—sleepy, but warm, welcoming. "Barom will be happy to meet you. Are you all right?"

Baekhyun had been busily looking around the apartment, eyes wide and mouth slightly open, but the question drew his focus back to Junmyeon. Maybe it was the reassuring lilt of Junmyeon's French—near flawless now, after having lived in Marseille for so long—or just the fact of being somewhere safe, but he seemed smaller now, not relaxed as much as just exhausted.

"We're both fine," Jongdae answered, when it didn't seem like Baekhyun was going to. "But I haven't explained to him what's going on yet. It's been a long evening."

Junmyeon nodded. From behind him, Zitao asked, in Chinese, "How many languages do you guys speak?"

The question, as out of the blue as it seemed, made Jongdae laugh, then lean heavily against the doorframe. The adrenaline of his fight-or-flight response was gone, and with it, most of his energy, leaving Jongdae feeling like little more than a hollow shell of a human—and a hollow shell with a lot of work to do, at that. "Five fluently and two proficiently," Jongdae said. "Junmyeon speaks nine."

"I've had more time to learn," Junmyeon said. 

Minseok nudged Zitao, who turned to him and said, in English, "Jongdae seven languages, Junmyeon nine." Minseok made a disbelieving sound.

At the flurry of Chinese, Baekhyun's brow furrowed, but the English made his expression relax again. He must understand some, then, Jongdae thought, even if he didn't want to speak it. 

Junmyeon turned back to Baekhyun and returned to French. "I'm Junmyeon," he said. "I understand you've had a difficult night."

"That's a nice way to say it, yeah," Baekhyun agreed.

"First, I want to make it clear that you can leave at any time," Junmyeon said. "You're not a prisoner here and if you choose to leave, you won't be followed. We may come to find you if we sense that you need our help, but until then we won't track you. I would like to emphasize that I think this apartment is the safest place for you to be right now, but again, it's your choice to make."

Slowly, Baekhyun nodded.

"We have a lot of explaining to do," Junmyeon continued. "But I do need to talk to Jongdae privately for a few minutes, so if you'd like to rest—or shower, maybe?"

For a moment Baekhyun hesitated, then said, "A shower would be nice. I feel like I need to wash off my whole top layer of skin right now."

"I wouldn't recommend that," Jongdae said. "But the water pressure in there is nice. I'll show you the way, come on."

He touched Baekhyun's elbow briefly to guide him down the hall, and pretended not to notice how Baekhyun jumped at the contact. Jongdae couldn't blame him for being on-edged—just the simple fact of a realization was a lot for anyone to take in, but that combined with what Baekhyun had seen tonight… 

"This is the nicest apartment I've ever been in," Baekhyun said.

"Yeah?" Jongdae nudged the bathroom door open and flipped on the lights. Through a stranger's gaze, the pristine marble surfaces and deep oak accents seemed ostentatious at best. "It's a little ridiculous, I think. But we've owned this apartment for… decades, easy, and I guess nobody's really had the desire to redecorate."

"It's not bad." Baekhyun looked around. "But probably costs my rent for a year just to keep this place for a month. You guys must be loaded."

Jongdae shrugged. "Not exactly," he said. "I'm a psychology professor, Junmyeon does graphic design. Kyungsoo—he's in America right now, he writes romance novels or something. Yixing owns a tea shop. On our own we probably make just enough to get by and not a whole lot more."

Baekhyun turned to him, and Jongdae could read the 'but?' on his lips before he even said it.

"The apartment is owned by the East and Southeast Asian branch of synecology," Jongdae said. "Collectively. Synecology is old, really well-established. There's an apartment just like this one in almost every major city around the world. They're not ours, but we can use them when we're working and the branch will foot the bill."

"When you're working," Baekhyun repeated. "As a psychology professor?"

"No, when we're working for the branch," Jongdae said. "Although there is also an apartment in Kazakhstan. In Almaty, where I live."

It looked simultaneously like Baekhyun was about to fall asleep standing and like he had a million more questions to ask. Jongdae shook his head gently. "Anything more than that is something you should talk about with Junmyeon," he said. "Here. There are towels and toiletries, and the door locks from the inside, so take your time, okay?"

Baekhyun nodded, and Jongdae closed the door behind him as he left before heading back to the living room. He could hear the sound of conversation from the living room, Junmyeon presumably fielding questions from Zitao and Minseok.

Indeed, when he came out into the living room, Junmyeon was sitting on a chair and the two of them on the couch, and Junmyeon looked for all the world like a teenager being grilled by his parents about his whereabouts last night. The fact that the thought even crossed Jongdae's mind meant that he must have been exhausted, but it still made him smile briefly before he cleared his throat. "We need to talk," he said to Junmyeon in Russian.

"German, Chinese, Russian, English," Minseok said in English, counting off on his fingers. "And?"

"Korean, fluently," Jongdae said. "Kazakh and French passably."

Both Zitao and Minseok turned expectantly to Junmyeon, and Minseok said, "English, Spanish, Chinese, Russian…"

"Korean, French," Junmyeon said. "Japanese, Armenian, and Arabic, although with a heavy Egyptian accent."

Zitao leaned heavily back against the couch. "I barely passed English," he said in Spanish, and Junmyeon smiled.

"By the time you've lived as long as I have you'll have picked it up," he said in English. "I hate to have to do this to you, but Jongdae and I need to speak privately. We'll be in the other room, so if you need something just knock."

Minseok nodded. Junmyeon got up and followed Jongdae into the next bedroom, where he sat on the edge of the mattress as Jongdae leaned against the dresser. 

"What happened out there?" Junmyeon asked. That pinched look of worry was back in his expression, drawing his brows tense. Jongdae was possessed of the sudden and inexplicable urge to smooth it away with his thumb. "There was just—Baekhyun, and then suddenly…"

Jongdae sighed. "It was basically like that," he said. "Baekhyun wasn't… it wasn't urgent, so I was just keeping track of him until I could head him off and talk. That's what I was doing when I sent you that text."

"That it was dark."

"Right. I think that was Baekhyun, his power. But I heard something on the next block and he started running, so I started running, and that was when I felt… whatever that was. Fuck. It made me sick, and poor Baekhyun was probably—terrified, so I chased them down until I found both of them."

"Baekhyun and?"

"Some other guy, I don't know. Baekhyun was cornered and the guy was, I don't know what he was trying to do but I had half a second to react, you know? So I zapped him. Not hard, but he was knocked out for a minute and when he came to I tried to get him to talk, you know, tell me who he was and who sent him."

Just the memory of the way the man's face had flickered, blurred out of focus and then back, was enough to make Jongdae's stomach clench up again. He took a deep breath and fought off the urge to gag. "He wouldn't tell me, I told him I wasn't going to ask him a third time and he said—'you won't have to,' or 'you don't have to' or something like that. And then his face just…"

"His face?"

"Yeah. It was like—have you ever seen The Ring?"

Junmyeon blinked. "What?"

"Okay, no, never mind. Sorry. His face did this thing, it just… I don't mean an expression, I mean his whole face just blurred out. It looked like when you take a picture on old film and it comes out distorted. Just for a second, and then he was dead."

"Oh," Junmyeon said. His fingers curled loosely into fists at his sides. "You know I have to ask this, Jongdae, but it wasn't—"

"It wasn't me." Jongdae spoke without hesitation. He knew his own power, he knew exactly how much to use to stun and how much to use to kill, and he had never killed anyone on accident, not even when he was a new synecologist who was calling lightning storms down to his village. "It wasn't me."

"I know," Junmyeon said. "Okay." 

He was quiet for a long moment. Jongdae didn't intrude.

"I'm going to call Yixing," Junmyeon finally said. "And I'll talk to Baekhyun when he's done. You and Minseok and Zitao—and Baekhyun, if he stays—you three or four will go to Yunnan tomorrow. I'll accompany you as far as London and then I'll stay to find whoever's there. I'm sorry to put so much on you all at one."

"It's what I'm here for," Jongdae said. "I'll go talk to Minseok and Zitao."

"Don't tell them too much," Junmyeon said. "I don't want them to be afraid without reason."

As far as Jongdae was concerned, there was plenty of reason, but he nodded nonetheless. "Of course," he said.

He left Junmyeon in the bedroom and went back into the living room, where Minseok and Zitao were still sitting on the couch. They had shifted positions only slightly, so that Zitao was dozing with his head on Minseok's thigh and Minseok was playing a game on his phone, the chiming sounds noisy in the silence.

"Where's Junmyeon?" Minseok asked. Back to German for now, since Zitao was asleep, Jongdae supposed.

"He had to make a call."

The bedroom veranda was barely visible through the living room window, and when Jongdae and Minseok both turned to look, Junmyeon was leaning against the railing, his phone tucked between his shoulder and his ear. The expression on his face was quiet contemplation, with the same hint of warmth that was always there when he spoke to Yixing.

"He looks like he's talking to a girlfriend," Minseok said.

The idea of Yixing being anyone's girlfriend, let alone Junmyeon's, was enough to startle a laugh out of Jongdae. "God, no," he said. "He's talking to Yixing."

"Boyfriend?" Minseok asked.

"No." Jongdae hesitated. "Yixing is… Yixing. That's all."

It was hard to explain.

"Yixing is in… Yunnan? China? He's a synecologist too?"

Even harder to explain. "Right." Jongdae sighed. "Yixing is… Junmyeon is…" Minseok tilted his head a little, and Jongdae sighed again. "Do you know that Archimedes quote, 'Give me a lever and a place to stand and I will move the world?"

"Sure," Minseok said, nodding.

"Junmyeon is the lever," Jongdae said. "Yixing is his place to stand. Junmyeon is… You don't know yet, but you'll feel it when we get to Kunming. Junmyeon is incredibly powerful. He's the oldest synecologist at the branch, and he's unimaginably strong. In power, and in personality. He's been through things and seen things that younger synecologists can only imagine. That's why he's our leader."

"And Yixing is the foundation that makes that possible," Minseok said. "I get it."

"Yixing would hate that I'm telling you this," Jongdae said with a soft laugh. "Junmyeon is a legend at the East Asian branch, but Yixing is a legend among synecologists. Period."

"He's that powerful?"

"And that… singular. In the whole history of synecology there has never been someone with a power like Yixing's." Jongdae leaned back in his chair and tilted his head against the cushion, letting his eyes fall closed as he did. "Not that you'd ever know by looking at him. You'll love him. Everyone does."

Minseok hummed. On his lap, Zitao stirred and then blinked his eyes open, although he looked disoriented and more than a little hazy. He said something in Spanish, which Jongdae couldn't understand, and then repeated himself in English. "What's going on?"

"Nothing," Jongdae said. "Just waiting for you to wake up."

Zitao sat up and rubbed his eyes, then stretched out, his back popping audibly. Jongdae winced. It couldn't have been comfortable to sleep in that position, and he wondered if they had stayed out here just to be ready when Jongdae and Junmyeon were done.

"Tomorrow you two and I will go to Kunming," Jongdae said. "And Baekhyun, if he's ready. Junmyeon will come with us to London, but he has some business to take care of first before he meets us in China."

"Okay," Minseok said. "When's the flight?"

"Mid-afternoon," Junmyeon said from behind them. Jongdae started a little—he hadn't even heard the bedroom door open. "You should all get some sleep before we fly." In Russian, Junmyeon added, "I spoke to Yixing, Jongdae. We'll talk on the flight." He rested his hand briefly on top of Jongdae's head, then asked, "Is Baekhyun done showering?"

"I don't know," Jongdae said. "The water's not running but he hasn't come out."

"Okay." Junmyeon headed down the hall toward the bathroom, and Jongdae turned back to Minseok and Zitao.

Neither of them said anything, but nonetheless Jongdae felt compelled to apologize. "Sorry," he said. "It's not that we want to keep you guys in the dark. There are just a lot of things we need to figure out, and we're planning on holding a branch meeting when we all get back. It'll be easier if we can cover everything for everyone all at once."

Minseok lifted a hand, waved it dismissively. "It's fine," he said. "We're new. I mean, I don't know about Zitao but I barely understand how all of this works, forget about the fine details."

Zitao nodded his agreement. Jongdae relaxed, slightly, and resisted the urge to lean back in his chair again. If he did, he was unlikely to get up again, and they would all need some rest before their flight tomorrow. "Okay," he said. "I appreciate that. You guys should go back to sleep if you can, tomorrow is going to be a long day."

*

When Jongdae came back from the bedroom and down the hall toward the bathroom, he was just in time to see Junmyeon emerge with a clear-faced, freshly showered Baekhyun in tow. "Hey," Jongdae said. "Are you feeling better?"

"Tired," Baekhyun said. "But I'm okay."

It did seem like the shower had helped, at least some—he seemed more stable now, less panicky. Jongdae hadn't realized how much eye makeup Baekhyun had been wearing, but seeing him now, with his face washed, made him seem younger, but also more alert. His gaze was sharp, when it came to rest on Jongdae.

He didn't want to ask, so he just glanced at Junmyeon, who correctly interpreted his look and said, "Baekhyun has agreed to come to Kunming with you tomorrow."

That was a relief. Light synecology was less dangerous than some other forms when it went uncontrolled, but life would be easier for Baekhyun if he was trained—and he would be safer, too, from whoever it was who was hunting down new synecologists as they came to their realizations. "That's good," Jongdae said, unable to keep all of his relief out of his voice. "Do you need anything from your apartment? You should get some rest, but I can go."

Baekhyun paused. "Maybe just a change of clothes," he said. "I don't think I want to fly all the way to China in my work outfit."

He was wearing black jeans that hugged his legs all the way down and a t-shirt clearly cut to show off his collarbones. Work outfit. Suddenly, Jongdae understood. "Okay," he said. "Sure. Just give me a key and an address and I'll pick something up." 

Baekhyun fished his keys out of his pocket and held them out to Jongdae, but hesitated just before dropping them into his outstretched hand. "Don't worry, you can trust me," Jongdae said, but Baekhyun shook his head and smiled a little.

"It's not that," he said. "Just thinking about how much I hate that fucking apartment and how glad I am to be out of it."

There was a tightness in his voice that almost made Jongdae ask, but Junmyeon shook his head almost imperceptibly, and Jongdae let it go. "I'll be back before you notice I'm gone," he said instead, gently plucking the keys from Baekhyun's unresisting fingers. 

"Just… anything that's not black, please?" Baekhyun said.

"You got it."

*

The trip to and from Baekhyun's apartment took less than forty-five minutes, and then Jongdae was back with Baekhyun's keys and a bag packed only with the necessities—underwear, socks, a pair of jeans and two t-shirts, just in case, none of them black.

Jongdae left the bag and keys in the kitchen and made his way through the darkened apartment. Outside, dawn was just barely starting to break, the sky lightening from inky pitch blackness to a lighter shade of velvet blue. It wasn't quite sunrise yet, but they were getting there, and Jongdae felt exhaustion creeping into his bones with every step he took.

Eyes mostly closed, he followed the familiar pulse of Junmyeon's power to the bedroom. The lights were off there too, but as Jongdae's eyes adjusted to the darkness he could faintly make out the edges of Junmyeon's form in bed. Other than the bedroom that Minseok and Zitao were sharing now, both of the other bedrooms in the apartment had single beds only—presumably the branch had never thought they would have five people, three of them strangers, trying to fit into the space.

"You're back?" Junmyeon asked, in Korean, his voice a sleepy blur. 

"Yeah," Jongdae murmured back. He had managed to get his jacket off, but the rest of his clothes were a lost cause—by now, his limbs were barely obeying him anyway. "Picked up some clothes. Locked the door. If I don't get in bed I'm gonna fall asleep on the floor."

Junmyeon laughed softly. "Get in bed," he said. "Long day tomorrow."

All Jongdae could manage was a hum. He flopped into bed, his head barely on the pillow, tugged the sheet up over himself, and then fell into a deep and desperately exhausted sleep.


	8. Chapter 8

Compared to the stress and trauma of the last few days, Jongdae would have thought that getting Minseok, Zitao and Baekhyun onto the airplane would be the easy part. Jongdae was used to flying—he did it enough that the prospect of a Lyon to London, London to Paris, Paris to Kunming flight was by no means a daunting one. Even for the new synecologists, who had varying experiences with international travel, he didn't think it would be too much trouble.

He wasn't entirely wrong. But he wasn't entirely right, either.

"How do they have so much energy?" Jongdae asked Junmyeon, the two of them sitting on a bench in the airport terminal while Baekhyun and Zitao created chaos in the duty-free shop, spraying cologne on each other and looking at sunglasses neither of them could afford yet. Minseok was following behind them somewhat more sedately, carefully righting the things they left haphazardly on counters, looking for all the world like a father taking care of two unruly children.

"They're young," Junmyeon said. Hearing such a world-weary, amused comment from someone who barely looked a day over twenty-five would have been funny if Jongdae didn't know better. "They haven't had a chance to really get tired yet. I envy them."

"You have plenty of energy when you need to, gramps," Jongdae said, and dodged the halfhearted attempt Junmyeon made to smack his shoulder. 

"Not for duty-free shops," Junmyeon said. He nodded in the direction of the three newcomers, his eyebrows lifted, and when Jongdae turned back to look he saw that Baekhyun and Zitao had entered the alcohol section. Minseok was looking in their direction, sending SOS signals with his eyes.

"That's my cue," Jongdae said, and stood up to go wrangle excitable synecologists.

"How much would we love Jongdae," Baekhyun said when he spotted Jongdae on the approach, "if he bought us this whisky to take on the plane?" 

"A lot, I'm sure," Jongdae said, taking the bottle of whisky from Baekhyun's hands and putting it back in its proper place. "But just because you two don't have branch credit cards yet doesn't mean I'm going to give you free access to mine."

Baekhyun's lower lip thrust out in a pout, but Jongdae—who had lived a long time and seen many pouts—was unswayed. "We should go to the gate," he said, putting one hand on Baekhyun's shoulder and the other on Zitao's. "We take off soon." 

Minseok, behind him, mumbled, "Thank god." Jongdae was sympathetic. 

When they came out of the duty-free shop, Junmyeon was outright laughing. "It could be worse," he said in Russian as Jongdae passed. "They could hate each other."

On the plane, the five of them occupied nearly an entire row. Junmyeon had the window seat—not even Baekhyun had dared to argue on that point—and the other four occupied the four middle seats, spacious reclining chairs separated by windows that slid up and down. Zitao, seated in the center between Jongdae and Minseok, put his down and left it there; meanwhile, Baekhyun, seated on the aisle on the opposite side of Minseok, pulled his up and down six or seven times before a passing flight attendant gave him a polite British smile that said _stop that right now_. 

"This is the most amazing plane I've ever been on," Baekhyun said. He'd left the seat divider down for now, so he had a clear view all the way to Jongdae. 

"Me too," Minseok said. 

"Me too," Zitao agreed. They had fallen into the habit of using English to communicate between the three of them. Contrary to what Jongdae had previously assumed, and despite Zitao's protests, Zitao's English wasn't terrible—not fluent, but passable. He would learn quickly.

"Actually," Baekhyun added, "I've ever been on a plane."

"In your life?" Minseok asked.

"Never." It looked like there was something more to the story, but Baekhyun didn't tell it just yet. Instead, he glanced between Minseok and Zitao and said, "Do you fly a lot?"

"My mom and I flew back to Korea a couple of times to visit family," Minseok said. "But she likes the train if we were traveling in Europe."

"My father… his business," Zitao said. "I was… when I help him, I fly a lot." 

The mention of Zitao's father cast a brief silence over the group. Jongdae wondered if they were each thinking of their own families, who they would likely never see again. He knew that Minseok's mother and Zitao's father had made peace with it, both having been familiar with the synecologist roots that grew from their family tree, but while Junmyeon had told Baekhyun to say goodbye to whoever he needed to say goodbye to, Jongdae hadn't seen him do it. He wasn't sure if Baekhyun had. 

"When I was younger and still had big dreams," Baekhyun said, "I used to dream about flying business or first class." He fiddled with the divider again.

"I'm feeling like maybe we should get used to it," Minseok said.

The flight from Lyon to London was less than two hours long, but Baekhyun and Zitao were asleep within the first twenty minutes. Jongdae thought about Baekhyun saying that this was his first time on a plane and considered waking him, so he could really experience it—but there would be little time for uninterrupted sleep in the coming weeks, once the synecologists started their training, so in the end he chose to let Baekhyun slumber in peace.

Halfway through the flight, Junmyeon lowered his divider and said, "I'd like to talk to you about London."

Instantly, Jongdae was alert. "Go for it," he said.

"Even from this distance I can tell that whoever is about to realize in London is exceptionally powerful," Junmyeon said. He glanced out the window, as if he would be able to see that someone from the air. "And as such I can only assume that they'll also be exceptionally valuable to whoever is hunting these synecologists down." 

Jongdae nodded. Between the two of them Junmyeon was infinitely more sensitive to the currents of power that ran through and around people on the planet, but even Jongdae could feel the tug of something, of someone, from London. Anyone powerful enough to make Junmyeon use adverbs like 'exceptionally' must have been powerful indeed. "You don't think you'll need help?" he asked.

"I don't think so," Junmyeon said. "My hope is that I'll be there early enough to have a head start on the search. If all goes as planned, I'll be on the plane to Kunming tomorrow with our new synecologist in tow." 

Things going exactly as planned wasn't exactly a guarantee, where synecology was concerned, but Jongdae suspected that now might not have been the best time to bring that up. Instead he nodded. "I'll take the—I keep wanting to call them kids."

"Compared to you, they are kids," Junmyeon pointed out. 

"I try not to think about that." Jongdae sighed. "Anyway, whatever they are, I'll take them to Kunming today and introduce them to their trainers at the center. Did you email the other seniors?"

"Before we got on the plane."

Of course. Junmyeon was meticulous to a fault when it came to matters of the branch. Jongdae didn't even need to ask.

"I did impress upon Yixing," Junmyeon continued, "that they should begin their training immediately. I'm hoping they'll be quick studies. It's better to be prepared, just in case."

 _Prepared for what?_ Jongdae wanted to ask. He knew that Junmyeon wasn't keeping him in the dark for no reason, but he couldn't help feeling as if he should know whatever it was that had worry pinching between Junmyeon's brows, whatever wove that extra thread of concern into his voice. Junmyeon carried the weight of the world on his shoulders, in an all too literal way, and it bothered Jongdae that there didn't seem to be anything he could do to alleviate it. 

When they parted ways at Heathrow, Junmyeon to his car and Jongdae, Minseok, Baekhyun, and Zitao to the gate where they would make their connecting flight, some of the bubbly enthusiasm from the Lyon airport had worn off. The sense of vacation, Jongdae felt, had passed, leaving only the reality of the situation in its wake: they were now on the second leg of a very long journey, one that would likely span decades if not centuries.

They spoke little at the gate, and little on the plane, until after the first meal had been served. When the lights went down, Baekhyun lowered the divider between his seat and Jongdae and asked, "What's Kunming like?"

Perhaps prompted by the sound of his voice, Minseok's divider lowered one chair over, and then Zitao's. Only the two on the aisles remained raised, affording them as much privacy as was possible in a cabin full of other passengers.

"It's pretty at this time of year," Jongdae said. "There are a lot of trees there, for a developed city in China. Lots of parks, a pretty big zoo. It's toward the south. There's an old city and a new city, and you can still see the old stone wall that used to mark the edges of the old city." 

"I meant more, what about the—" Baekhyun began, but Minseok pinched his elbow, cutting him off.

 _Be careful_ , Minseok's look seemed to say. Baekhyun huffed, but adjusted course: "What about where we're going? How many people are there?"

It wasn't the most elegant rephrasing, but Jongdae was glad that what he and Junmyeon said had made enough of an impact on them that they remembered not to discuss synecology too openly. "It's big," he says. "It looks like an office building, but it's mostly residences, and the training areas are in the basements."

"Sounds boring," Baekhyun said. Behind him, Zitao snorted.

"It is," Jongdae said with a laugh. "There are seventeen of us working for the branch—well, twenty including you three." And twenty-one including whoever it was Junmyeon was going to pick up in London. "Most of us don't stay in the center unless we have to, so people tend to come and go. On an average day, it might be Yixing, Qian, and one or two others." But these were not average days, so—"But almost everybody will probably be there when you arrive," Jongdae added. "Everyone who can help train you will have been called back by now."

"That's fewer than I expected," Minseok said. "Seventeen?"

Jongdae shrugged and lowered his voice. "A single one of us is really powerful," he said. "There are eight branches around the world and almost all of them have between fifteen and twenty members. As outliers, I think Oceania has fourteen and the South American branch has twenty-two?"

Minseok nodded. "I guess I expected an army."

"Not at all. If anything, we're the opposite. There aren't many of us, but we don't fight unless we absolutely have to, and we try to stay out of people's business as much as we can. Those are the two main rules."

The tenets were much more complex than that, layered, intricate things that had been wrought from centuries of the practice of synecology. Explaining them in one short sentence somehow seemed not to do them justice, but it was the best Jongdae could do under the circumstances. He stretched out a little and added, "There aren't many rules, but the ones we do have are important."

"How long have you been doing this?" Baekhyun asked.

In the back of Jongdae's mind he could hear Junmyeon's voice saying, _Compared to you, they are kids._ He smiled. "About five and a half centuries," he said quietly. 

Baekhyun cursed elegantly in French. Zitao's eyes widened, and he nudged Minseok. "Five hundred?" he repeated. Minseok nodded. "You're so old."

Jongdae pretended to wince, raising one hand to cover his heart in a pained gesture. "You wound me," he said, although secretly he was glad that their spirits seemed to have been lifted at least a little. If it meant they weren't drowning in their own thoughts, Jongdae was happy to put his own age up as a subject for jokes.

"I mean, we knew Junmyeon was old," Baekhyun said. "I just didn't think you were that old too."

"I'm one of the youngest," Junmyeon said. "There are only three members who are younger than me. Well, six now."

"We're going to be the babies," Minseok said with a tone of sudden realization. He turned to Baekhyun and asked, "How old are you?"

"I'm twenty-six this year," Baekhyun said. "What about you?"

"Twenty-eight," Minseok said. "Tao?"

"Twenty-four," Zitao said, and the other two exhaled sighs of relief. 

"Zitao is the baby," Minseok said decisively.

"You're all babies when our average age is in the seven hundreds," Jongdae pointed out.

Minseok shook his head. "But out of all of us," he said. "Zitao is the baby, so Baekhyun and I will at least have that."

Zitao scowled and said something unkind in Chinese, which made Jongdae laugh and made the other two give him looks—unsure what he said, but sure that it hadn't been nice. "You'll be fine," Jongdae said, once he'd taken a deep breath. "After a while you'll stop noticing who's how old."

They fell quiet for a while, for just long enough that Jongdae was sure they were asleep, before Minseok stirred and turned to him again. "I have another question," he said, this time in German. 

Jongdae nodded. "Sure."

"Does Junmyeon always look that worried?" 

It shouldn't have surprised Jongdae, that one of them—if not all of them—had been perceptive enough to pick up on the tired lines of Junmyeon's shoulders and the way he furrowed his brow in thought. The worry in Junmyeon's expression was very nearly a palpable thing, something that rolled off him in waves. Jongdae pressed his lips together and exhaled softly.

"Not always," he said, after a long pause. "He has a lot on his mind right now."

Minseok nodded once. "I've been thinking about it," he said. "You're the fourth youngest synecologist and you're five hundred years old—if there are only three younger than you then it must be weird that you've picked up four of us within a week."

It wasn't only uncommon—it was unheard of. The last synecologist brought to the East Asian branch had been Minhyuk, more than two centuries ago.

"It's a little weird," Jongdae admitted.

"Is that why he's worrying?"

"It's part of it," Jongdae said. "I don't know exactly what's going on, either. Junmyeon is… he'll be your best friend if you let him, but he's also our leader and sometimes he has to make decisions about what to tell us and when. You'll know as soon as he can tell us anything substantive."

The explanation seemed to be enough for Minseok, who nodded and turned to lean back in his own seat. But Jongdae stayed awake long after Minseok had fallen asleep, looking at his hands and wondering. He'd answered Minseok the best way he could—diplomatically, reassuringly—but the truth was that Jongdae wasn't sure either. He could only hope that Junmyeon would fill them all in sooner rather than later.


	9. Chapter 9

By the time that the airplane wheels touched the tarmac, Junmyeon could already feel the pollution running through the city's energy currents.

Maybe it was just because he knew what to feel for, now, but the sense of wrongness felt stronger in London than it had in Lyon or in Barcelona, and Junmyeon's body didn't seem to be adjusting. He was glad, as he left the airport and got into the car that was waiting for him, that he had chosen not to eat anything on the plane—even his empty stomach was rolling with nausea, leaving a sour taste in the back of his throat. It was unpleasant, and more than that it was frightening. Fear was not an emotion Junmyeon was accustomed to feeling.

As they drove toward the apartment, Junmyeon closed his eyes and did his best to pinpoint the new synecologist's location. He was nearby, Junmyeon felt, and getting closer as they drove—and unlike Barcelona, where Junmyeon had followed threads of power until he was able to grasp at its source, the synecologist in London was powerful. He radiated energy like a beacon, the pulse of it reassuring despite the black rot that threatened to creep in when Junmyeon didn't focus hard enough.

It wasn't uncommon for a synecologist to be powerful, even at the moment of their realization. Jongdae had been powerful, and Kyungsoo, and many other synecologists from the other branches around the world. Even so, Junmyeon had never felt power quite like this. Its source was steady, and its strength, but its form seemed to be in flux, shifting even as Junmyeon tried to put a finger on it. 

It was impossible to know exactly what a synecologist's power would be before it was realized, although educated guesses could be made—Kyungsoo had guessed fire for his synecologist in Arizona, and Jongdae had guessed ice for Minseok. 

Power felt different, Junmyeon had come to learn, depending on from where it was drawn. Kyungsoo's power was a steady pressure, while Barom's seemed to illuminate him from within. Qian's and Jongdae's crackled somewhere, both reassuring and awesome. It was hard for Junmyeon to describe his own power, but once Yixing had told him it felt the way clouds did before rain, like a dampness in the air, which Junmyeon supposed made sense.

And this synecologist in London… it was none of those things. Psychic pressure, yes, but less like the reassuring solidity of earth and more like mercury, slick and silver and quickly slipping away over the surface of his mind. Junmyeon couldn't predict it—he couldn't even fully understand it. 

The city drew nearer, and with it, Junmyeon's focus grew sharper—as did his nausea. Finally, just as the driver was pulling to a halt in the alley along the side of the apartment building, the curtain of darkness parted —for just a split second—and Junmyeon realized, with near perfect clarity, that the source of the power was nearby and moving fast.

"Stay here," he told the driver.

With more than just the branch members in pursuit of these budding new synecologists, Junmyeon couldn't afford to hesitate. He wound his way through the streets towards Trafalgar Square, from which he could feel the rising tide of the new synecologist's power.

Each step was torturous. By now it was less nausea and more pain, stabbing into Junmyeon's insides and radiating through his bones. His very joints ached with it, and he clenched his teeth hard, hearing them grind in his jaw. Junmyeon had been alive for a long time—he had felt a great deal of pain, but this was something new altogether. It was, he realized, not a physical pain, but rather pain inflicted on the very part of him that made him who he was, whatever it was inside him that connected him to the earth and made him a synecologist. A place that until now, Junmyeon had believed to be untouchable.

He passed St. Martin-in-the-Fields and entered the square, already full of people even though it was barely half past nine. Full of people, which made it dangerous, meant not only that the synecologist would be harder to find but also that there would be more witnesses to their realization. The psychic blast wouldn't touch any human, but it would touch Junmyeon, and he wasn't sure if he could withstand a realization this powerful and not give himself away.

Standing at the top of the stairs, Junmyeon looked out over the square, his gaze half-focused as he relied on his other senses to pinpoint the source of the power that now washed over him in a constant, steady ebb and flow. 

_There._ Among the people milling about, locals and tourists alike, there was a young man making his way through the crowd. He looked like a college student, like any other college student, but the shimmer of power around him was unmistakable, as was the harried, fearful expression on his face when he turned around. 

They locked eyes across the square. A pain shot through Junmyeon's chest, so abruptly that he gasped and clutched at the front of his sweater. 

From the southern end of the square, another figure was moving with intent. A woman in a black suit, her gaze fixed on the man, her expression nakedly antagonistic. From her emanated the same nauseating waves of sickness that Junmyeon had felt in Barcelona, only stronger by a hundred times, a thousand. 

Junmyeon moved as quickly as he could without drawing attention to himself. He took the stairs two at a time, slipping in between clusters of people walking or loitering in the square, making his way towards the synecologist ahead of him, who had turned away and was heading for the square's west end. 

Water in the fountain base, Junmyeon noted. Water on the ground in puddles. Water in the air, in the clouds that hung over London even as spring eased its way into summer. If it came to that, Junmyeon would be able to fight.

Ahead of him, the woman in black was gaining ground. 

She was also, Junmyeon noticed, lifting her hands in a stance he recognized. It was the same thing Kyungsoo did just before using his power, fingers stretching out and then curling in as if curling into the soft earth and pulling. 

"No," Junmyeon said aloud, unable to help himself.

A family turned to look at him, attention drawn by his volume, and at that moment, the ground ripped itself apart. 

It was preceded by a few seconds by a low rumbling sound, and then the concrete and stonework split into a gaping chasm, the earth beneath rolling and tossing. The square was in chaos around him, people screaming, the sound of metal girders shrieking as they were torn and twisted. The crash of metal on metal and shattering glass as cars collided on the streets. And ahead of him, still, the woman in black, now looking at him, her face a twisted grimace of malice as she crooked her fingers in Junmyeon's direction.

The split in the stones raced towards him, and Junmyeon ran, dodging panicked citizens as best he could. With his left hand, he brought the moisture in the air around the column tight against its stone surface, holding it in place; with his right, he reached out and drew from a puddle near the woman's feet, the water whipping around her hand, crushing until bones broke under the pressure.

She screamed, not a sound of pain but one of anger, and used her other hand to bring the chasm around. Earth squeezed up between the cracked places in the stones and caught at Junmyeon's feet, sending him off-balance. 

The pressure of the new synecologist's coming realization was almost unbearable. He had dropped to his knees, Junmyeon saw, and was breathing hard—his power rising, rising until it felt like a hand around Junmyeon's lungs. There was nothing that he could do.

When it came, the blast knocked him to his back. It was only by instinct alone that Junmyeon was able to keep the column standing—the hand that had been holding the woman immobile hit the pavement and he lost his grip. But maybe she had been brought down by the blast too, because rather than being immediately swallowed by the earth, as Junmyeon had expected, he was able to push himself back up to his feet, dirty and breathless but otherwise unharmed.

The synecologist was gone.

At first Junmyeon thought it was just the calm after the storm, the comparatively light pressure that followed a realization—but no, that wasn't it at all. It wasn't the calm after the storm, it was a complete absence of the synecologist's pressure, no trace of him in the square whatsoever. No trace of him in the city. 

Junmyeon cast his mind as widely as he could and felt, from far to the north and slightly to the west, the familiar tug of the synecologist's power. 

It was impossible. 

The woman in black climbed to her feet and moved to attack again, prompting Junmyeon into a defensive stance. But then she, perhaps, realized the same thing Junmyeon had—that the synecologist was gone—and dropped her hands. She looked angry. It was only the absence of satisfaction on her face that allowed Junmyeon to have hope.

He turned and ran, his right hand now bringing water pressure down against the stones under his feet to keep her from using the earth to trip him up. Junmyeon knew that once he left the square, his hold on the column would weaken until he could no longer hold it up—and then it would fall, with or without his help. So as he ran, he shouted, "The column's coming down!" and tugged it toward him, bringing it down as slowly as he could, guiding it into the gaping crevice that yawned in the paving stones of the square. It was the best he could do, to keep it away from anyone who might be injured, and in the resulting burst of dust and small stones Junmyeon was able to get away.

No one gave him a second glance as he headed away from the square. Anyone with any sense was far away, and those without any were headed for the scene of the disaster itself. By the time the video footage was pulled from traffic cameras and closed-circuit systems around the square, Junmyeon would be long gone, and his face would be scrubbed from the images before anyone who mattered could see them, but the fact of it all—the woman, the fight, the incredible disregard for who might be watching—made something angry and fearful riot in Junmyeon's stomach.

The car was just where he'd left it, still idling, the driver still at the wheel. Junmyeon pulled the door open with more force than was necessary and threw himself into the backseat. "Back to the airport," he said.

"Yes, sir," the driver said, and pulled away from the curb. 

Junmyeon called Yixing from the backseat.

"Junmyeon," was the first thing Yixing said when he picked up. He always had an uncanny way of knowing when Junmyeon was upset, but just the sound of his voice was enough to have Junmyeon drawing a calming breath, although his exhale was shaky.

"Get in contact with the other branches immediately," Junmyeon said. "Tell them that they need everyone they can spare tracking down the synecologists who haven't realized yet."

"What happened?" 

Junmyeon forced himself to slow down, taking another deep breath and letting it out through his nose. To the rest of the branch, he was known for being near unshakeable—to Yixing, less so, but Junmyeon still wasn't in the habit of panicking over the phone. 

"They're being hunted," he said. "I don't know who's behind it or what their goal is. I just came from Trafalgar Square. One of the—whoever it is, one of them just tore it open end to end."

The absolute stillness from Yixing's end told Junmyeon that the weight of his words had not been lost. Finally he said, "In front of—?"

"In front of everyone," Junmyeon said. "No casualties, at least not from the—it wasn't synecology. It was the same power, but everything was all wrong, everything was—think about whatever it is you draw on when you use your power. Think about that part at you core and imagine someone poisoning it. It felt exactly like that."

He slumped against the seat, tilting his head back. There was a throbbing headache pounding in his temples, and his mouth was dry.

"Where are you going now?" Yixing asked.

"Edinburgh," Junmyeon said. "This is… nothing I've ever seen before, Yixing. I felt his realization, and then it was just… gone. He was gone. And when I felt for it again he was kilometers northwest. It's Scotland, either Edinburgh or Glasgow and I'm making a guess."

"Go," Yixing said. "I'll call everyone. Be safe."

It wasn't just a way to say goodbye—it was a command. Coming from Yixing, Junmyeon was powerless to disobey. "I will," he promised, and they hung up without another word.

*

It was just past one in the afternoon by the time Junmyeon landed in Edinburgh. He'd realized on the descent that his guess had been the right one, and thank all the powers for that, because Junmyeon did not have time to fly to Glasgow if he'd been wrong. He could feel the corruption in the currents, something that was beginning to be painfully familiar, and Junmyeon knew that if he made it to the boy first, it would be by the narrowest of margins.

There hadn't been time between London and now to find a driver, so Junmyeon got a car himself and left the airport with demons at his heels. The synecologist's power was strong again, now, a beacon that Junmyeon followed along the bypass toward the southwest edge of the city, into the suburbs and past schools and parks overflowing with people. It was afternoon now, and there were children playing in schoolyards, adults walking along the streets to shop, gathered in cafes and restaurants and in front of community centers, chatting. 

Junmyeon loved humans in all their incredible complexity, but right now, the sight of so many terrified him. If whoever was after these synecologists was so willing to rip open the earth under Trafalgar Square, there was no reason to believe they would hesitate to do the same here.

He followed the synecologist's power into a small neighborhood, full of council housing. There were fewer people milling around, blessedly, but that didn't mean that the coast was clear. As he approached, focused with all his strength on the more familiar signature of the synecologist from London, Junmyeon realized all at once that it wasn't only one signature he was chasing—it was two, the second weaker and overpowered by the strength of the first. 

_Two syecologists_. Nearly on top of each other, by the feel of it. Junmyeon hadn't even felt the second realization, he'd been so focused on the first.

How likely was that? Not very.

Junmyeon rounded a corner. There, ahead of him, was a rowhouse that all but radiated power, the raw power of a newly-realized synecologist and the dark, polluted power of whoever it was who was chasing them. There was a black car parked on the street in front of the house, and as Junmyeon watched, a man and a woman, both in black suits, emerged from the house two escort two young men down the walk.

One of them was the synecologist from London. The other was unfamiliar, and the pressure he exerted on Junmyeon's psyche was weaker, but he was a synecologist without a doubt, and these people—if Junmyeon could call them that—had gotten there first.

Instinctively, Junmyeon crooked his fingers and reached his power out into the water from a sprinkler in a neighbor's yard—but then he recalled the destruction in Trafalgar Square, how close a call it had been, and relaxed. It had been a stroke of pure luck that no one had died in London, and Junmyeon wasn't willing to bet that he'd be as lucky here as well. 

There was no doubt that the man and woman in black knew Junmyeon was there. As much influence as they exerted on him, he undoubtedly exerted just as much in return—and as if to confirm his suspicions, the woman turned back just before she climbed into the car, locking eyes with Junmyeon through the windshield. He tensed, prepared to fight, but perhaps they were just as loathe to repeat the London incident as Junmyeon was, because after a long moment of just looking, she climbed into the car and they peeled away from the curb.

At this point, Junmyeon had no choice but to follow them. He stayed as close as he could without being reckless, making quick turns and accelerating slightly through yellow signals—they were fast drivers, more nimble with a car than Junmyeon was, but he kept up as best he could, until they had wound their way into a complex, gritty maze of side streets and alleyways that butted up against the Water of Leith, heading toward the harbor.

Suddenly, Junmyeon wished very much that he'd asked Jongdae to come with him. At least then he might have a fighting chance.

He lost the car somewhere in the harbor-front docks, unable to keep up with their hairpin turns and dangerous accelerations. Maybe London had made him cautious, unwilling to risk a second potentially high-profile exposure for synecology, this time in the form of a car chase—or maybe he just wasn't that good a driver. Either way, one second they were there, and the next they were gone, the same split-second disappearance that Junmyeon had felt earlier that day. This time, though, he couldn't track down the synecologist's signature again—it had vanished from his senses, along with the weaker synecologist and the man and woman in black. They were gone. He had lost.

Junmyeon parked along the water and walked out to its edge, onto a dock to be closer to the reassuring pull of waves lapping at the pylons. As if sensing his disquiet, the water grumbled, eddying in off-center spirals and then dispersing. 

"I lost them," he said, when Yixing answered the phone. 

"The synecologist?" 

"Both of them." Junmyeon sighed and reached up to rub the bridge of his nose. There was a headache pounding behind his left eye, maybe stress, maybe residual from the pollution in the currents. "There was another one in Edinburgh. I didn't even know… He wasn't very strong. His signature was drowned out behind the one from London, but even so, that's no excuse. I should have known."

Yixing said nothing. Junmyeon knew he was right—he had been doing this too long not to notice the realization of a second synecologist, even one whose signature was weaker than the one on which he was focused.

"I don't understand any of this," Junmyeon said. It felt like admitting to a terrible secret. "I don't understand why these people make the currents feel so… rotten. I don't understand how they found these synecologists before I could. I don't understand how that boy got from London to Edinburgh—he teleported, I know that, but how? We've never had a synecologist with the ability to displace himself in space-time."

"Yes, we have," Yixing said, softly. 

The words sent a shock of despair up Junmyeon's spine. "No," he murmured—not to Yixing, but to the notion itself. The very idea of Lu Han was devastating.

"I know," said Yixing, carefully. "I know that you haven't wanted to say it to me."

Junmyeon knew what he meant. He wished he didn't. 

"I don't want to say it to anyone," he said. "I won't until I'm sure. It's impossible, Yixing. It's impossible."

"Until an hour ago you would have told me it was impossible for you not to feel a realization," Yixing said. His voice was perfectly even, calm in too many ways. It made Junmyeon profoundly uncomfortable, to hear that tone. "Let's not discuss the impossible."

Junmyeon wanted to scream, or throw up, or cry, or all of those things. Instead, he did none of them, just took a deep breath and exhaled it evenly. It tasted of salt, of fish and chips from the fryer a block down. "I'll be in Kunming by tomorrow," he said. "I need to go to the locus, and then we'll need to have a meeting. The eight of us, and then I'll probably need to speak with the global leaders. I'll send you the address of the house and the license plate number of their car, I need to know who lives there and whose car they took." Already his mind was working a mile a minute, sorting through everything he'd need to ask, everything he would need to search for at the locus to understand what was going on in the world.

Until now, Junmyeon had always felt that he had both feet firmly planted on the surface of his planet. Now he felt off-kilter, off-balance, like someone had pulled a rug out from under him and he was struggling to find his footing.

"Junmyeon," Yixing said. The practiced calm had melted out of his voice, and Junmyeon could hear the truth of Yixing—the depth of his caring, his sadness and his worry. "I'm already doing it. Just come home safely."

"I will," Junmyeon said, a promise he intended to keep. 

When Yixing hung up and the line went dead, Junmyeon stayed on the dock for a while longer, looking out at the sea.

**Author's Note:**

> find me at @[peonydust](http://www.twitter.com/peonydust) on twitter or [10cmpersecond](http://10cmpersecond.tumblr.com) on tumblr.


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